A Plague On All Their Houses
by LisaT
Summary: A mysterious epidemic has drained the magic of the inhabitants of Cackle's, and darkness is creeping over the wizarding world. Can they beat the illness in time to make a stand? LAST CHAPTER UP... UNTIL THE SEQUEL!
1. Chapter 1

_This fic sets Cackle's Academy and its inhabitants in JKR's wizarding world. I will thus borrow the concepts and the occasional character from the Potterverse, but the story will remain firmly rooted in The Worst Witch world, and will be based primarily at Cackle's itself. I kept seeing references to TWW/HP crossovers, but I've yet to see one of any length that doesn't simply pick up Mildred and Co and dump them in Hogwarts. I don't expect Hogwarts or the Trio to appear in this story at all, except incidentally through hearsay, but I'll probably use my two favourite HP characters: McGonagall and Snape, although I'll try not to overuse them! I'd also like to beg, plead and grovel for a beta. I like this idea, but I need someone to bounce ideas off and keep me focused when the fandom part of my brain goes 'Oh, shiny!' and is tempted to move off to pastures new. At the moment, I envisage this as falling between the 20,000 to 30,000 word mark, but who knows…! Timewise, I'm roughly pegging this as happening in S2 for TWW, and during the year covered by _Half Blood Prince_ for Potterverse. And, of course, all reviews/comments are eagerly devoured! _

**A PLAGUE ON ALL THEIR HOUSES**

Imogen Drill paced the tiny staffroom of Cackle's Academy and shivered. The bitter wind outside blew straight through the glassless windows and flayed her to the bone. Usually the lack of glass was not an issue; usually, the magic of the hundred odd witches who inhabited this old building provided sufficient barrier against the elements. 'Sufficient', not 'comfortable'; Cackle's could never be described as _that_. For the past weeks, however, that magic had slowly faltered, and the unmagical Imogen presently found herself in the incongruous position of being literally the strongest person in the castle.

She shivered again and pulled her fleece around her, as it tight as it would go. There was no point in suggesting warm-ups, or runs, or a nice spot of gym. Hardly anyone was well enough to benefit, and even those few who were not actively ill were below par, to put it mildly. In short, Cackle's was in the grip of an epidemic that showed no signs of abating any time soon.

Her glum musings were disrupted by a tart interruption.

'_Must_ you wander around in that fashion?' Constance Hardbroom's voice held all of its normal acerbity, but only a fraction of its customary strength, and Imogen turned to look at her.

Cackle's Deputy Headmistress had always been a slender woman, but now she was verging on skeletal. Her eyes burned, the fever-flush made her look almost healthy – but Imogen knew that Miss Hardbroom's usual skintone was pale, and the flush was simply a mockery.

'Do you think Amelia will be able to get help?' Imogen asked, aware that she sounded dangerously close to pleading.

Constance carefully put her pen down – even a fever of over a hundred degrees could not keep her from her marking – and folded her hands tightly on the table. 'I don't know.'

She coughed, harshly, and Imogen restrained herself from rushing over to offer support, knowing that the older woman would only resent it.

'We can't go on like this,' Imogen insisted, putting her hands flat on the time-worn oak table and leaning forward, her elbows straight. 'How long until one – or more – of the girls _dies_? What will happen to the school _then_?'

Constance raised one eyebrow. 'Cackle's has survived epidemics before, Miss Drill.' She coughed again, and the hand she raised to her mouth trembled slightly. 'Haven't you noticed? None of us are ill enough to die.'

Imogen snorted. 'Have you looked at yourself lately, Miss Hardbroom? Frankly, I'm surprised you're able to sit up. You should be in bed!'

Constance shook her head in a tiny motion that reflected how little energy she had. 'You don't understand. That's not how this illness works. We're ill because our _magical_ immune systems are in revolt, not our physical bodies. It's our magic that's being burnt away by the fever, and – and the emaciation and other symptoms are merely side effects of that.'

Imogen collapsed limply into one of the chairs – ignoring how it creaked beneath her weight – and stared at her colleague. 'You've lost your magic?' she repeated, stunned.

Who would Constance Hardbroom be without her magic? It permeated her entire being, the roots of her witchily dark hair all the way down to the pointed toes of her equally witchy boots.

For answer, Constance raised her hands in the spell-casting position that Imogen had come to know so well, and pointed them at her. Reflexively, Imogen winced, and she could have sworn that a smirk of a smile tugged at corners of Constance's mouth. It was a wry smirk, she realised at once – for there was no green flash, no spark, no explosion… Cautiously, Imogen reached up to pat herself from head down to waist level, just to check that everything was where and as it should be, and ignored how the smirk almost – almost! – turned into a smile.

'It's nearly gone,' Constance said, once Imogen had finished patting and tugging. 'You're quite safe.' She coughed a third time, doubling up with it, and Imogen stepped forward.

A magic-less Constance Hardbroom seemed suddenly significantly less formidable.

'That's it,' Imogen said loudly, going to the sink and running some water into a chipped glass. 'You're going to bed, Miss Hardbroom, and there's nothing you can do about it.' She grinned as the put the glass in front of the older woman. 'Time to leave the Muggles in charge, my dear.'

When Miss Hardbroom obeyed without a further word, Imogen found herself wishing that she could call that last comment back. She had – she admitted it – been hoping to stir Constance in some kind of retort; that quiet acquiescence was as unexpected as it was terrifying, and the cold coil of fear that Imogen had been trying to ignore for weeks tightened deep within her.

She curled tightly into Miss Cackle's comfy chair next to the fire and prayed for all that she was worth that the Headmistress would come - and come quickly.

It was nearly silent in the dungeons, the quiet broken only by a chorus of harsh breathing and the occasional hacking cough. The members of DOBS had chosen to retreat to their favoured hiding place rather than their dormitories; at least the dungeons were windowless and therefore fractionally warmer than their icy rooms, and here they could be together.

'I'm so sick, sick and _sick_ of being ill,' Enid Nightshade announced petulantly, throwing the book she had been idly thumbing through across the room. Or rather, she tried to throw it, but failed miserably, and the book fell, open, on the floor.

'If I didn't feel like dying, Enid Nightshade, I'd think about setting HB on you for that,' came a weak voice from the other side of the dungeons. When DOBS had announced their intentions for the duration, Fenella Feverfew and Griselda Blackwood had immediately declared themselves to be honorary members, and joined them forthwith. 'That's the only copy of _Magical Maladies_ our library has, and it's nearly three hundred years old.'

'It's okay, Fenny. She hasn't hurt it,' Griselda assured her, having crawled across the room to check. 'It's a little crumpled but we can soon fix that.'

'Can we?' Jadu Wali asked, a cough hitched fore and aft.

Enid groaned. 'Don't be cryptic, Jadu, please. What do you mean by that?'

'She only means we can't fix it – normally. Magically, I mean,' Mildred Hubble supplied, looking ruefully down at her long slim fingers. 'Look!' She pointed her fingers at the hapless book and muttered something, and her friends reared back, experience having taught them long ago that Mildred's magical actions rarely matched her impeccable intentions.

In this case, their caution was unnecessary. Nothing happened, and Mildred sighed and huddled up against the cushions of the beaten old sofa . 'See?' she said sadly. 'It's all gone. Funny how you miss it, even when you're as rubbish at it as I am.'

'Do you think we'll ever get it back?' Maud Moonshine asked, wiggling her own fingers. She shivered. 'Even though this place has never been exactly comfortable, I've always felt … _safe_, here. If we've lost all our magic, it's just become another draughty old castle.'

'It almost makes you wish we'd let Mr Hallow get ahead with his plans to give us a swanky new place, doesn't it?' Ruby Cherrytree put in. 'It would've had have central heating, Miss Drill said. _Muggle_ central heating, the kind you can switch on and off.' Her tone was longing. Like Mildred and Jadu, her parents were Muggles and she was missing the comforts of home rather desperately just now.

'I don't think HB'd like that,' Mildred said. Then an idea occurred to her, and she sat bolt upright, moaning quietly when the movement send a shot of red-hot pain through her head. 'There's a thought. What if HB's lost all her magic too?'

The others looked grave. None of them would claim to be especially fond of Cackle's relentlessly strict Deputy Headmistress, but they all respected her magical strength, even when they grumbled about her disciplinary edicts.

'That must be why Miss Cackle has gone to the MM,' Fenella said. 'No-one would worry if it was just us. They'd just say something about our ages and how _of course_ we must expect fluctuations in our magic, until –er – everything settles down.' She grinned, the sight a hideous one in the candlelight. 'D'you think any of our esteemed mistresses have ever heard of _hormones_?'

'Why the Ministry, though?' Griselda queried. 'Why not the Council? Won't the Ministry send her away with a flea in her ear?'

'Miss Cackle mustn't be too badly off,' Ruby added. 'If that was an option, HB'd have gone. Can you imagine anyone sending her off with a flea _anywhere_?'

Despite their poor health, the girls grinned, but their grins died at once.

'Miss Cackle and HB must think this is all too serious for the Council,' Maud said with her usual good sense. 'That's why she's gone to the Ministry. To – to report it, and ask for help.' She pulled her blanket closer. 'There's darkness coming, can't you feel it? Something is wrong with our world.'

Amelia Cackle exited the Minister's office, a dumpy little figure in worn black. Her shoulders were slumped, for her visit had been spectacularly useless. The Minister had made it all too clear that he believed she was making an enormous fuss about nothing. He'd hemmed and hawed about how it was time Cackle's Academy started _taking notice_ of what was going on in the wizarding world, instead of being so _insular_. The last word had almost been growled – the Minister, Amelia felt, was positively leonine – and she was then dismissed by the simple and impolite means of magically propelling her out the door.

She stood in the atrium of the Ministry, taking it in. Its grandeur alienated her, a testimony to the hubris of various past Ministers. The smooth surfaces and large statues were totally foreign to her; she was accustomed to buildings that wore their age proudly, if shabbily. And the people. Despite the Minister's rantings, the atrium was busy, and Amelia blinked, intimidated by the thought that all of these men and women were magical, and almost definitely more powerful than she was. Her shoulders drooped further, and she wished yet again that Constance had been able to make this trip.

The wish turned into an imagined encounter almost at once, and Amelia straightened, her chin coming up. _She_ might not be anything to speak of, magically, but she would back her deputy against any one of these puffed up witches and wizards, with their fine robes and fancy Hogwarts educations.

_That is, I'd back her when she's well_, she mentally edited, and despair overwhelmed her, causing her to drop rather limply onto the rim of the nearby fountain.

_We're finished_, she admitted to herself. _A thousand years of witch education gone, just like that, and all because of some_ virus. _What would Great-Great… however many greats it is … Granny Cackle say?_

She was just trying to think of how she could break the news gently when a shadow fell across her, and she glanced up, half expecting it to be another self-important Ministry official who would ignore her.

Instead, the figure before her was oddly familiar. Tall, thin, garbed in black, black hair twisted in a tight bun…

'Amelia Cackle, isn't it?' the figure asked, and Amelia's despair slid away like a dropped cloak.

She bounded to her feet, and grabbed the tall woman's arm with both her hands. 'Professor McGonagall!' she exclaimed, exuberant in her relief at seeing a familiar face. 'You have no idea of how happy I am to see you! Absolutely delighted!'

Minerva McGonagall was clearly startled by this enthusiastic greeting. 'I see,' she said, gently detaching herself. Then her eyes narrowed behind her glasses, and her lips thinned. 'Is everything quite all right, Miss Cackle? I don't believe we've ever met in these surroundings before.'

Amelia beamed. 'No, the last time we met was when Constance was promoted to Deputy Headmistress, wasn't it? And that was at Cackle's. You had a tour,' she ended, rather lamely, remembering McGonagall's stunned silence in response to Castle Overblow's shabbier bits.

'It was a very enjoyable day,' Professor McGonagall responded diplomatically, but Amelia was only too aware that her sharp gaze was roving up and down, no doubt noticing the thin patches in Amelia's robe, and the fact that she had clearly lost weight.

'Have you been unwell?' McGonagall demanded, her bluntness reminding Amelia inescapably of her cousin, Constance.

'Only a little.' It was a feeble response, Amelia knew, but it was the truth. She had come through the epidemic relatively unscathed, thus far. Anxiously, she peered up at McGonagall, examining the other woman through her horn rimmed glasses. Would Minerva McGonagall be willing to help?

She drew herself up. It was important that McGonagall take her _seriously_, and not simply consider her as the slightly bonkers principal of Cackle's (although she was fairly certain that would not in itself deter the older woman; after working with Dumbledore, McGonagall must surely be accustomed to eccentric Heads). 'Professor McGonagall –'

'Minerva,' that lady stated firmly. 'We are colleagues, after all.'

Amelia nodded her thanks. 'Minerva, then. I – oh, it's all so puzzling. Everything is not well at Cackle's, or with Constance.' Amelia's eyes dropped to the shiny black floor, vaguely aware of the reflections that danced and skittered on the smooth surface. '

'Go on,' Minerva urged, almost as if Amelia was a student.

'Three weeks ago, one of the second years, Mildred Hubble, came down with a – a – well, we thought it was a cold. Mildred's never been very good at shielding charms,' she explained quickly, 'and I suppose it was rather nippy.'

McGonagall raised an eyebrow in a fashion that reminded Amelia, again, of Constance.

'We packed her off to bed in the sick room in the dungeons, because there's no draughts down there, and Constance dosed her up to the eyes. But nothing worked. Her temperature just went up and up … and then her magic went. She did recover, a bit, but not enough. Even now, she's not the girl she was, and … well, it's _Mildred Hubble_, and she's almost a wraith.'

'I believe I recollect that name from Constance's letters,' Minerva put in thoughtfully. 'Isn't she the girl Constance calls the "worst witch in the school"?'

Despite everything, Amelia laughed. 'She is. Constance and Mildred have an – uh – clash of personalities.'

'I see. That's not all though, is it?'

Amelia shook her head. 'If only. No, Mildred was only the first. One by one all of the girls and staff succumbed. Only the Muggles – Miss Drill, Frank, and Mrs Tapioca – have been immune.'

'And you,' Minerva observed thoughtfully.

Amelia could feel the tide of colour wash across her face. 'Not entirely,' she returned with dignity. 'I am a witch, I'm just … not a very powerful one,' she went on in a rush, acutely aware that she was speaking to one of the most powerful (in more way that one) witches in their world. 'The severity of the illness seems to correlate to one's power.'

'So Constance has been severely affected,' Minerva said softly, and Amelia nodded.

'Exactly. Without Constance we're vulnerable, Professor. Even the castle has become increasingly unliveable; we hadn't realised how much the residual magic was keeping the place going.'

'A cherry ripe for the plucking,' Minerva mused. Her brows contracted. 'This is not good, Amelia. Leave it with me. I'm going back to Hogwarts now and I'll have a word with Poppy Pomfrey and Severus. We may be able to help. In the meantime, we may need to send people up to scout; I don't like to think of all of you up there, ill and helpless, with Voldemort on the rampage.'

Amelia blinked. 'Voldy-_what?_'

Minerva sighed. 'Don't any of you people ever read the news?' With a practiced flip of her wand, she conjured a newspaper and handed it to Amelia. 'Here. Read it. Show it to Constance. And, for Merlin's sake, be careful!'

And with that, she was gone, leaving an openmouthed Amelia behind her. 'I wish they wouldn't _do_ that,' she muttered, a trifle peevishly, as she shook the paper open.

AZKABAN BREACHED! DEATHEATERS ESCAPE! the headline screamed. Under it was a series of moving portraits, and Amelia's breath caught in her throat as she saw one she recognised.

In between a picture of a snarling brunette labelled as 'Bellatrix Black' and another smaller figure ('Alecto Carrow') there was a face that was literally as familiar to Amelia as her own.

Her twin sister and nemesis, Agatha Cackle.

_So, what's the verdict? Worth continuing? Reviews = confidence boost = motivation = more fic! *shameless begging*_


	2. Chapter 2

_Here's the second chapter! This story has taken over my headspace lately, and I've got the last-but-one chapter written as well as the first half of the third chapter, so there's a good bit to come. I'm aiming to keep the chapter lengths at around the 3000 word mark. Thanks to all the reviewers, including __**CirqueduGleek**__, who reviewed this prior to posting. _

_**Sue Denham**_**: **_hello to you too; it's good we've both reappeared together, as it were. I've now read all of _Closure_ and enjoyed it very much!_

_**Lemondrop**_**: **_I've only seen a few _House_ eps, so no link there, except that they're both essentially sixteenth century quotes. 'Pox' was short for smallpox, but could be used as a generic descriptor of any number of spotty illnesses, including bubonic plague itself. The title of this fic comes from _Romeo and Juliet_ .*removes historian hat*_

_Anyway, on with the show…._

** CHAPTER TWO**

'I know many of you are still not very well, but it's time to get back to normal. After all, this is a school, not a hospital!'

A feeble titter greeted Miss Cackle's words, enough to cover Enid's, 'Lately, it's been both,' hissed into Maud's ear.

Maud responded with a dig in the ribs and a meaning stare in Miss Cackle's direction. With only half the school present in the Great Hall, Maud was very aware that whisperers could be identified more easily than usual.

Furthermore, judging by Miss Drill's glare, they had already been noticed, and she knew that the Games mistress was getting twitchy from unaccustomed inactivity. The last thing she wanted was to find herself doing some 'gentle' aerobic exercises intended to 'build up your strength'. As a result, she returned her attention to Miss Cackle and her peroration, checking out of the corner of her eye that Enid had done likewise.

'Those of you who are well enough – that is, everyone here now – will return to lessons. Since so few of us can do magic at the moment, it will not be _completely_ as normal, but we'll do our best, won't we, even if we can't "keep our cauldrons bubbling nicely"!'

Miss Cackle paused in her pep talk to smile, and the girls smiled back, albeit a little reluctantly. Some of them were well enough to _enjoy_ the respite from lessons.

'That will be all for now. Off you go to your form rooms, and remember to work together and help each other. You never know, without being able to fall back on your magic, you may discover some unknown talents!' Miss Cackle beamed at them in her usual fashion, before loudly suggesting that Miss Bat might like to play them out.

'I hate cheerful people first thing in the morning,' Enid grumbled as Miss Bat began a shaky rendition of _Onwards, Ever Striving Onwards_ at the piano and they began to file out of the Hall. 'And Miss Cackle's the worst of the lot. Honestly, she doesn't even look as if she's been ill, so it's all right for _her_ to go on about going back to normal.'

'Oh, stop complaining, Enid,' Jadu reproached. 'I think Miss Cackle's right. It'll be good for everyone to experience life without magic for a bit.'

'That's a very –' Enid started to snap before she closed her mouth shut, tossed her head, and went on into the room that was their temporary form room. Rumour had it that Miss Hardbroom refused to countenance anyone going near her beloved potions lab until magic levels were restored.

'What's up with her?' Ruby asked of Maud and Jadu, her eyes wide. 'She's been permanently grumpy for weeks.'

'My mum would say she's not a good patient,' Jadu, a doctor's daughter, agreed. She put a hand on each of her friends' elbows and began to urge them towards the classroom door. 'Come on. Let's get going. Even though poor Millie's not here, you can bet HB'll still be watching us and I don't think I could cope with one of her detentions just now.'

Ruby laughed, but Maud bit her lip as she allowed the other two to tow her into the classroom.

She was worried about Mildred, who had spent the past couple of nights wrestling with bad dreams that had triggered a renewed temperature spike. In addition, Maud had a sneaking suspicion that she knew what Enid had so narrowly avoided saying to Jadu, and her heart sank. They'd always been such a happy band at Cackle's, leaving aside the odd blip, and she hated to think that the politics of the wizarding world outside were finally starting to leak into Castle Overblow along with the wind and the rain.

_I wonder if Enid reads the papers?_ she thought uneasily as she took her seat, Mildred's empty place beside her gaping a hole. _Does she know what's going on? She's not a pureblood snob, not like Ethel, but for a minute there-_

Her dark cogitations were interrupted by the door opening, and all thoughts of Enid and politics fled. Maud's jaw dropped, and it took a supreme effort to pull her face into a bland expression as a bathchair-ensconced Miss Hardbroom was wheeled up to the front of the classroom by Miss Drill.

'Stop gawping, girls, and _no_ talking,' Miss Hardbroom commanded in a whisper that was a shadow of her usual tone. 'I'm no more an invalid than any of you, appearances to the contrary. Thank you, Miss Drill.'

Maud blinked as Miss Drill started to say something, but Miss Hardbroom waved a hand. '_Thank you_, Miss Drill,' she repeated as forcefully as she could, and the Games teacher shrugged and departed, no doubt seeking her own form.

Miss Hardbroom's eyes narrowed as she looked over the class. 'Hmmm, we're not exactly a shining example of attendance this morning, are we,' she noted. Seated behind the teacher's desk, she almost looked her usual self – although that was given the lie by her disconcertingly authoritative near-whisper. Miss Hardbroom was not in the habit of whispering, authoritatively or otherwise.

Her gaze fastened on Maud.

'Maud Moonshine, I take it your usual partner in crime will not be joining us today.'

'No, Miss,' Maud admitted softly. 'Miss Bat told her to stay where she was. Her temp's gone up again.'

'How like Mildred, to run the most spectacular fever in the school,' Miss Hardbroom observed, the lines at the corners of her mouth deepening. 'I suppose our other absentees are also still suffering from our malady.'

'We're all still suffering,' Maud heard Enid snark from behind her. Her hand itched; never had she so longed to slap Enid as she had over the past month.

'Ethel's terribly sick, Miss,' Drusilla volunteered importantly from the other side of the classroom. 'She vomited _three_ _times_ last night. _Projectile_ vomiting, too.' She cast a triumphant glance in Maud's direction, and Maud rolled her eyes.

_So now we're competing about symptoms_, she thought incredulously, and almost cheered when Miss Hardbroom said in her driest tones, 'Thank you, Drusilla. I'm sure we were all longing to know that.'

'Miss, why are we here?' Enid dared, perhaps spurred to rashness by the very visible frailty of their usually indomitable form mistress. 'It's not as if we can do any _real_ work, is it.'

Miss Hardbroom skewered her with a glare that held all its usual venom, bath-chair or no bath-chair. 'Is that so, Enid Nightshade? In that case, you can be the one to distribute the books on the desk.'

She moved her glare to the class at large, and raised her voice as much as she physically could. 'Next year you'll be preparing for your Junior Witches' Certificate, and it won't hurt you to read through _Intermediate Potions and Potionmaking_ for the moment.'

The class groaned, Maud along with them. _IPP_, as it was known, was the most detested textbook the third years had, mainly – as Mildred had once said sorrowfully – because it was extremely dense, with little in the way of pictures.

'Quiet, please,' Miss Hardbroom warned. She glanced out of the windows to the miserable autumn day outside. 'I understand Miss Drill was hoping to take out those of you who have recovered more than others; perhaps you would prefer that?'

Silence fell at once, broken only be the sound of Enid handing out the books, with rather less care than could be expected. When it was Maud's turn, the book was almost thrown, heedless of the proximity of Miss Hardbroom and Maud's own protested, 'Enid! Get a grip, will you?'

'Oh, shut up,' Enid returned in a hiss before moving on, and Maud bit her lip and tried to suppress the sudden tears that had come to her eyes.

What was _wrong_ with Enid these days? She could understand that her usually disgustingly healthy friend hated the inconveniences of illness – and magical illness at that – but the truth was, Enid was one of the lucky ones. She'd been really ill for only four days, in contrast to Maud's own ten, Ethel Hallow's fortnight, and Mildred's near-month.

Maud pulled her book towards her, absently smoothing the leaves as she flipped to the pages Miss Hardbroom indicated. Was that it? Did Enid _resent _her swift return to something resembling health? And if so, why on earth?

The letters danced on the page as she tried to read and think at the same time. Now that she was able to consider it properly, she realised that Enid's mood had been – off – ever since they returned to school for the second half of the Christmas term. She'd been fine before that, Maud was certain. So what had changed?

_Everything's changed_, she answered herself sadly as she remembered her own holiday. The Moonshines were an old pureblood wizarding family, but not a particularly prominent or wealthy one. All the same, she remembered overhearing a worried discussion between her parents during the break. They had wanted to take Maud away from Cackle's, something about it being too Muggle-friendly and _just_ _not safe_. Maud had found herself eavesdropping by accident, and she'd been too embarrassed by that to burst in and demand an explanation, but now several disparate things she'd noticed over the holidays began to come together in her mind.

Her mother's nervousness. Her father's haunted eyes. The deserted state of Diagon Alley the day they went shopping, and her mother's palpable anxiety the entire time, her refusal to relax and browse as she usually did. Maud had noticed that more than anything, since her shopping was one of her mother's favourite activities.

Had something similar happened to Enid? Or… worse?

'Have you finished, Maud?' Miss Hardbroom's voice demanded wearily, and Maud jumped guiltily, startled out of her reverie.

'No, Miss,' she confessed reluctantly, dropping her eyes to her book and wincing in anticipation of Miss Hardbroom's explosion.

Instead, her form mistress sighed. 'Just do what you can until the bell goes.'

'Yes, Miss.' Maud immediately returned her eyes to her book and began to concentrate, unwilling to push this unheard-of leniency too far.

_Everything really_ has _changed_, she thought fleetingly before forcing her brain to immerse itself in the intricacies of the chemical make-up of Wide-Awake Potion.

**xxx**

The bell had just gone for Break, and Amelia was still seated in her office, staring longingly at the plate of cheesecake Mrs Tapioca had sent up for her. It looked delicious, as Mrs Tapioca's sweets often were (the less said about her savoury food, however, the better – especially when Constance was permitted to design the menu). The base was golden and crumbly, just as Amelia liked it, with a good topping of just the right thickness and consistency. She knew, even without tasting it, that the whole would slide down easily, a divine moment of selfish indulgence.

Which was precisely why she was seriously considering feeding it to the cat, who was lurking hopefully on top of filing cabinet behind her. She could not help thinking that such enjoyment would be wrong when her staff and pupils were still suffering the effects of the magical epidemic, and the wizarding world beyond seemed to be heading for some sort of apocalypse. She pushed the cheesecake away and pouted at it, almost as a child does when deprived of a treat.

It just wasn't _fair_. What had Cackle's done to be victimised like this? They'd always kept such a low profile, avoiding as much controversy as they could. Granted, that had become more difficult since the advent of Mildred Hubble, but even Mildred at her most heedless could not possibly be considered responsible for their current situation. Even if, being Mildred, she was the first to fall before the foe.

'We've been targeted,' Amelia muttered fiercely, absently stabbing the table with her fork in her agitation. 'And I'll bet everything I have that my sweet sister is at the bottom of it, somehow.'

That thought reminded her of the paper Minerva McGonagall had thrust into her hands, and Amelia – rather sheepishly, it must be confessed – extracted it from the back of the drawer she'd shoved it in on her return from London. Dealing with a magic-draining epidemic was quite enough, she'd thought at the time, without taking on the woes of the entire wizarding world as well.

The sound of altercation outside the office made her look up from the paper she had spread across the table, and she sighed as she heard Imogen say something that sounded like, '…bloody stubborn!'. No prizes for guessing who she was talking to, Amelia thought as she placed her hands on the desk and pushed herself to her feet.

She opened the door to the sight she'd expected. Constance in her bathchair, sheet white, but her posture as straight and as unyielding as ever, and an exasperated Imogen, arguing that Constance really should call it a day and return to her room.

'I am not in the habit of shirking my duties, Miss Drill, whatever you may do,' Constance rasped haughtily. 'We are returned to normal, or whatever passes for normal around here, so _naturally_ Iwill return to my usual routine.'

'It's not real normality, is it, Constance,' Amelia pointed out as she joined them, noting how Constance's lips thinned and Imogen's eyes rolled. Honestly, sometimes her staff required more management than the pupils.

Constance shot her a look that Ruby Cherrytree would probably characterise as 'well, duh!'.

'No, Headmistress. I assure you, I am literally painfully aware of that. However, as I have pointed out to Miss Drill many, _many_ times, we are not truly physically ill. It would be difficult, but not impossible, for us to go about our normal routine provided we do not attempt magic. Therefore, I would appreciate it if she – and you, and Davina – would stop this infernal _hovering_!'

'Constance –' Amelia tried again.

'Leave it, Amelia!' Constance hissed. Her gaze shot daggers at Amelia and Miss Drill equally. 'I am fine. If I require assistance, I will ask for it. In the meantime, I need nothing more than my desk and the pile of _hopelessly_ bad essays I am certain the third year will have left for me!'

Imogen's eyes found Amelia's, and they were wide open with shock. Amelia shrugged and said tonelessly, 'If you would be so kind, Miss Drill. I believe Miss Hardbroom would like to return to work.'

And with that, Amelia turned on her heel, walked to her office, and shut the door behind her with a firmness that almost turned it into a slam. Hurt mingled uneasily with rare anger. How dare Constance speak to her in that fashion, as if she was an unruly child and not Constance's boss – nay, her _friend_, if Constance Hardbroom could be said to have any friends. She certainly didn't deserve them.

Thoroughly annoyed, Amelia retook her seat and eyed the cheesecake she had so heroically been planning to feed to the cat. Her eyes narrowed and the lines of her face became resolute.

She drew the cheesecake towards her and studied it. Then she picked up her fork and rammed it through the cheese topping and biscuit base, relishing the high clink she heard when stainless steel hit porcelain. She scooped a large forkful and brought it to her mouth.

She closed her eyes and savoured its sweet smoothness. Sacrifice be damned.

**xxx**

In the staffroom, the air was thick with tension. Constance sat at her desk, her entire body swaying with the ferocity of her pen strokes as she attempted her marking. Imogen sat in the comfy chair, idly tossing a ball, heedless of the fact that the repeated sound of skin-on-ball contact was likely to rile Constance further.

And Miss Bat, naturally, had retired to the cupboard. Apparently, she was confiding her woes in the furniture, for a high murmur exuded from the cupboard the entire time, accompanied by the occasional ominous wobble.

The silence, broken only by the pat-pat-pat of Imogen's ball and Davina's murmuring, continued for some minutes. Imogen watched as Constance's form grew stiffer and stiffer, noticed how she flinched at each 'pat' from the ball and cry from Davina, and found that for once she did not care.

Eventually, Constance took a deep breath and turned to face Imogen. 'Miss _Drill_, I would appreciate it if –'

'Frankly, Miss Hardbroom, I don't care what you'd appreciate,' Imogen said in tones that were icy enough to belong to Constance herself. 'You were unforgivably rude out there.'

'That's none of your business,' Constance returned swiftly. Perhaps too swiftly. She turned back to her marking.

'I hate to remind you, but I am a member of the teaching staff, just as much as you are,' Imogen responded sharply to Constance's back. 'You had no possible right to speak to Amelia as you did, especially when she was just showing concern. Or trying to.'

Constance said nothing.

Imogen sighed. 'Have it your own way.' She crossed to the cupboard and rapped the door lightly. 'Davina, it's all right now. Come on out. We can go down to the kitchens and talk Mrs Tapioca out of autumn fruit salad.'

Davina's wild grey head peeped timidly around the door. 'With sherry-flavoured cream?' she asked hopefully, her large grey eyes blinking owlishly behind her glasses.

Imogen relaxed and smiled. Davina would never change. 'We could always ask.' She glanced at the Deputy Headmistress and her tone became cold. 'Miss Hardbroom wishes to be left alone.'

And she ushered Miss Bat out of the staffroom, leaving Constance alone.

**xxx**

_*rattles upside down witchy hat* Reviews, please?_


	3. Chapter 3

_Thanks to __**Chrissiemusa**__, __**LongVodka**__ (love the name, btw) and __**NCD**__ for their comments, particularly the latter! __ Please do keep those comments coming, and I'll start being more conscientious about replying individually. Thanks again to __**CirqueduGleek**__ for looking over this chapter!_

_Just on a sidenote, I don't like the new FFN user panel thingy. I'm a geek, but even I find it a tad over-complicated. Much prefer the simplicity of the old one._

_And we're off…_

**CHAPTER THREE**

As the days passed, the victims of the epidemic began to slowly recover their physical strength, although their magical powers remained in abeyance. To make matters worse, the temperature outside started to plummet as autumn turned to early winter, but even the rimed frost could not compete with the icy atmosphere within the castle itself.

It could be felt all the way down from Miss Cackle's office, where the Head and her Deputy were nothing but exquisitely polite to each other, to the little first years. The latter group had taken to playing 'Unforgivables' in their free time, secure in the knowledge that their lack of magic ensured that no-one would actually be harmed. All the same, just _pretending_ to cast curses such as the Killing Curse, or the torture curse, _Crucio_, had an impact, and before long even the youngest students had taken to arguing as fiercely as their elders.

**xxx**

'You've got to _do_ something, Miss Cackle!' Miss Drill insisted, some ten days after her attempted argument with Miss Hardbroom in the staffroom. Afternoon tea had ended, and by now all the girls should be sitting in their form rooms and getting on with their prep. 'The girls are at each other's throats, and they're becoming absolutely _impossible_ to teach!'

Miss Cackle eyed her over the top of glasses that were, for once, perched on her nose. 'They're teenage girls, Imogen, and most of them are still feeling the effects of the epidemic-'

'Oh, that epidemic!'

Amelia pushed her glasses up her nose. 'Yes, the epidemic. We can't discount its impact just because you and I have been fortunate enough to escape, more or less.'

Imogen flung herself down on the nearest chair and slumped, crossing her arms. Amelia hid a smile; at this moment, Imogen did not seem so very much older than their pupils.

'Give them time,' she counselled.

It was the wrong thing to say. Imogen bounced up off the chair and began to pace the floor energetically. Amelia winced for the rug under the younger woman's feet – an inheritance from Great-Great-Great-Great Granny Cackle, one of the few items of any value within the castle.

'_Time?_ Miss Cackle, you should be thanking your lucky stars that this epidemic has removed everyone's magic. If you'd heard some of the things the girls have been saying to each other-!' Miss Drill shivered. 'There's a genuine vindictiveness there, and – and it frightens me, Amelia.'

She leaned over the desk, almost invading Amelia's personal space. 'In all honesty, if this goes on I wouldn't be surprised if there was a tragedy once everything goes back to normal. I heard Fenella curse Griselda yesterday – and it wasn't done idly, either. _Fenella_ and _Griselda_!' She was clearly breathless at the thought.

Amelia folded her hands on her desk and frowned. Teenage spats were one thing, but the thought of Fenella Feverfew and Griselda Blackwood at odds was so alien to the _status quo_ that it pointed to the presence of something more than a simple illness at work – even assuming their illness could be considered 'simple'. She looked at the Games mistress – the one teacher who seemed to be able to move amongst the pupils almost as one of themselves – and studied her, taking in the wild blonde crop and anxious blue eyes.

'Anyone else?' she prompted. Her mind went to another inveterate band – that of Mildred Hubble and her cronies. 'What about the Third years?'

Apparently relieved that she was being taken seriously, Imogen dropped onto the hard wooden seat that faced the desk, placed there by Miss Hardbroom for the use of miscreants.

'Mildred and Maud are continuing much as usual,' she began. 'Ditto Ruby and Jadu. Ethel's been out of the running, thank goodness. Enid –'

'Is hunting with Drusilla Paddock,' Amelia supplied softly, having noticed this for herself.

'And doing her level best to turn the others into permanent enemies,' Miss Drill agreed with a sigh. She leaned one elbow on the table and disconsolately propped her chin on her hand, staring blankly out of the window behind Amelia's left shoulder.

The Headmistress started to fidget, guiltily aware that the girls were not alone in disputing amongst themselves. 'We can't do anything about the girls, Miss Drill,' she said softly. 'Not when we're being as bad as they are.'

Imogen stiffened instantly. 'If you mean Constance Hardbroom –'

'I do.'

Imogen gave another sigh, a gusty one that made the untidy heap of papers on Miss Cackle's desk rustle uneasily. '_She_ should apologise to _you_,' she said pointedly. '_We_ weren't the ones being rude.'

Amelia stretched out her hands and studied them. They were short and stubby, increasingly veined with age, but they were capable. No matter how it might appear to others, she knew that the reins of Cackle's Academy remained firmly in _her_ hands, and not the slimly elegant ones of her deputy. And although Constance had now practically abandoned her wheelchair, she still remained comparatively frail.

She looked up, her decision made; it was time to break this silly freeze between Cackle's senior staff. 'Imogen, go and find Constance, and ask her to come to me. It's nearly supper, and I'd like to see Constance eat a proper meal for once. Besides, we'd better put our own house in order before we can do anything with the girls.'

Imogen rolled her eyes, no doubt anticipating an acerbic response to Amelia's request, but Miss Cackle noted how the lines of strain on the younger woman's face eased as she left the room. Clearly, Imogen was relieved that some action was being taken.

Amelia felt her own heart lift as she pulled a stack of unopened post towards her. She might as well _look_ as if she was doing something useful before being faced with her relentlessly efficient deputy. As she ran a fingernail under the lip of the top envelope to prise it open, she began to hum. Perhaps now that they'd taken the first step, things would start to go right.

**xxx**

Meanwhile, Sybil Hallow ran through the winding school corridors, tears flowing freely as she went. Not that anyone paid much attention; before she'd been in the school a week she'd become famed as the First year who could turn on the waterworks at the drop of the proverbial hat. An extra year had not changed that, but at this point in time the Second year felt that, for once, she had good reason for tears. And she was running straight towards the one person who had shown her a consistent, if exasperated, kindness.

She burst into the Third's form-room, the door bouncing back against the wall with a crash, and – not unnaturally- attracting the attention of everyone in the room as they put their books away and awaited the supper bell.

'It's just the crybaby again,' Drusilla said with a roll of her pale eyes. Beside her, Enid snickered.

Sybil ignored them, for Mildred and Maud were coming up to her, and she gave a further blustery sob when she saw the concern in their eyes.

'Whatever's the matter now, Syb?' Maud demanded briskly.

Mildred patted her on the shoulder. 'It can't be that terrible,' she observed sympathetically.

'That's all you know,' Sybil wailed, shoving several leaves of Hallow-monogrammed paper into the elder girl's hand. 'Just _look_!'

Mildred exchanged a quick glance at her friend before she did as she was bid, her warm brown eyes scanning the two sheets with a rapidity that would have astonished her form mistress. When she reached the end, she returned the papers to their owner, too surprised to say anything.

'_See?_' Sybil said, dissolving into renewed sobs.

Maud pulled at Mildred's arm. 'What is it? What did it _say_, Millie?'

'Mr Hallow says he's going to take Syb and Ethel away,' Mildred responded. 'He doesn't think Cackle's is an ideal place for – what was it? "Pureblood witches of impeccable breeding who should have a bright future ahead",' she quoted.

Maud wrinkled her short nose. 'What a horrid snob.'

Sybil sat down on one of the desks and planted her feet on the chair, elbows on knees, and chin on hands. 'That's just Daddy for you,' she said dismally. 'But that's not the worst of it!' She lifted her head and stared at the two older girls, every line of her figure exuding tragedy. 'He wants to get us a governess! A _governess!_ Can you imagine anything more _dire_ than being home alone and doing lessons with _Ethel!_' And she began to wail again.

'Isn't Ethel too ill to be moved?' Mildred asked abruptly. 'Drusilla's always telling us about the projectile vomiting thing.'

Sybil gave vent to an indescribable sound, somewhere between a laugh, a sob, and a snort. 'Ethel's never sick,' she declared to her sister's astounded form-mates. 'If she's being that sick she's doing it deliberately, and for a reason. In fact,' she bit off, 'I wouldn't be surprised if this is _all Ethel's doing!_'

Maud's gingery eyebrows shot up so that they disappeared under her deep fringe. 'The epidemic?'

'No-o-o,' Sybil howled. 'Writing to Daddy and asking to be brought home.' Her eyes popped open, suddenly shrewd behind their veil of tears. 'How else would he know about – about, well, everything that's been happening here lately? You _know_ Old Cackle told us to keep it quiet.'

The two Third years exchanged a glance of realisation.

'Oh, no,' Maud breathed, triggering a puzzled look from the younger girl.

Mildred's eyes were wide. 'Your father's on the Board,' she reminded Sybil.

Sybil stared at them for a long moment before starting to cry again. These tears were different; they were not the loud, angry tears of childhood, but softer, older, a recognition that something had shifted. 'She's done it, hasn't she,' she muttered before raising worried eyes to her two older friends. 'Ethel's set something in motion, whether she meant to or not, and there's nothing _any_ of us can do to stop it!'

**xxx**

When preparation in the Great Hall ended, Miss Hardbroom made her slow way back to the haven that was her potions lab, leaning heavily on the sticks that the school's caretaker, Frank Blossom, had fashioned for her. They were tiring to use, for Frank's carpentering skills were as limited as his mechanical abilities, and one stick was a good two inches shorter than the other, leaving Constance feeling permanently off-balance. All the same, it was better than the indignity of the wheelchair, so she kept quiet and carried on, fiercely determined to avoid asking for help from her colleagues if she possibly could.

Now as she leaned back against the lab door to close it, she gave a sigh of relief that she would allow no-one else to see, and closed her eyes for a second. They opened again immediately, for Constance hated to display weakness, even when she was alone. She set her teeth and made her way up the classroom before sinking down into her chair, exhausted. She stared at the jar before her and debated taking another dose of Wide Awake Potion before pushing it aside. Thus far it had failed to work, and she did not think it would suddenly become efficacious. Besides, she had a sneaking suspicion that the magic in the potion meant that it would only work on a magical being, and Constance was miserably aware that at this time she could barely even be described as a witch.

It was enough to give her an entire new appreciation for the Muggle Games mistress. Indeed, she mentally winced as memory supplied instances of condescending remarks, barbed witticisms, and sharp comments aimed at the younger woman; really, Imogen had been quite tolerant! No wonder she had finally exploded ten days ago during Constance's altercation with Amelia.

Although Constance had certainly paid for _that_, she thought ruefully. She had always prided herself on her ability to live without other people's approval, but the past ten days had been a strain. She had never realised how much she appreciated Amelia's gentle smile or never failing concern until those things were replaced with strict formality; never appreciated how Amelia's insistence on using Constance's first name was a reminder that she was more than her teaching persona might indicate.

Yet she could not change; as she had told Mildred the year before, she had been dancing too long to one tune to learn any other. And if her magic did not return…

She was jolted out of her dark thoughts by the sound of the door opening, and she glanced up to see Imogen Drill's head peak cautiously into the room.

Their eyes met across the classroom, but neither spoke.

Eventually, Constance huffed. 'Was there something you wanted, Miss Drill?'

'Can I come in?'

Constance rolled her eyes at the idiocy of the question. 'Unless you have lost the use of your legs, I am sure you can.'

Imogen looked confused. 'What?'

'Never mind,' Constance said wearily. 'Come in, please.'

The rest of Imogen entered. She kicked the door shut behind her and Constance winced, but forbore to say anything, waiting with what patience she could muster until her colleague was standing on the other side of her desk.

There was an awkward silence.

'Miss Cackle needs you in her office,' Imogen told her abruptly.

Constance raised an eyebrow. '_Now?_'

It was Imogen's turn to roll her eyes. 'Of course, now!'

The two women glared at each other; polar opposites who would always clash.

Constance took a breath, more worried by the summons than she cared to show. 'Has something happened?' she asked as she slowly levered herself to her feet.

The response was a rather odd smile. 'Just a little fence mending,' and Imogen turned and left, this time closing the door behind her gently.

Constance frowned as she watched her go, her heart rate escalating slightly. It could not be that simple. Nothing was ever that simple, even with Amelia.

**xxx**

By the time she reached Amelia's office, Constance's legs were shaking from the exertion of forcing her body to move across the school so quickly. She rapped on the door, her customary decisive knock, and opened it at once before Amelia was able to speak.

'Miss Cackle,' she began once she was in and seated, with the door safely closed against pitchers large and small. 'I –' She broke off as she took in the blankness of her employer's expression, and all of Constance's misgivings returned in full force. She pulled herself up, straight and stoic. 'What has happened?'

'Constance,' Amelia said, and something twisted inside Constance relaxed at the sound of her name. 'I'm sorry. I sent for you to that we might – er – have a nice relaxing meal together and – er – put the unpleasantness of the past week behind us, but, um…'

'But _what_, Miss Cackle?'

Amelia raised her head, and Constance's worry went up a notch as she absorbed the Headmistress's expression. Amelia looked … shocked, and perhaps frightened.

Constance dug the fingernails of one hand into the other, the discomfort keeping her alert and focused.

'Brace yourself, my dear,' Amelia warned, peering over the top of her glasses in that vague manner that Constance usually found so exasperating. 'We are being faced with what I believe the girls would call a – a double whammy.'

Constance swallowed, wishing Amelia would just get on with it. '_And?_' she prompted pointedly.

In answer, Amelia slid two sheaves of paper before her deputy, neatly – and uncharacteristically – bound together by paper clips. The first page of one sheaf was headed by the monogram of the Hallow family, whilst the other bore the insignia of the Witches' Teaching Council.

Constance scanned them quickly, her dark eyes zooming backwards and forwards at an uncanny speed as she flipped through them. Once or twice they faltered, but she did not stop until she had read the two letters in their entirety. Then she returned them to Amelia with careful delicacy, as if they were dangerous devices that might explode at any second.

'I see,' she said frostily.

Amelia pulled her glasses off her nose and absently let them drop so that they dangled on their cord about her neck. Constance noted the movement out of years of habit; eventually Amelia would demand to know where she'd put the dratted things.

'Say something,' Amelia begged, her nervousness clearly evident.

'Say _what_, Headmistress?' Constance snapped. 'It would seem there is nothing _to_ say.' She glared at the sheaves of paper. 'It has all been neatly tied up and there is nothing we can do about it!' There was a slight tremble as she finished, and Constance knew from the quick glance Amelia sent her that it had not gone unnoticed.

'Mr Hallow withdrawing his daughters would not be a huge problem in and of itself,' the Headmistress said thoughtfully. 'However, his position on the Board makes it problematic. They are like sheep; where he goes, others follow.' Her lips pursed tightly, a sure sign that she was troubled.

Constance sniffed. 'Yes, not one of them has a mind they can call their own,' she said disapprovingly. 'Clearly, the full truth of our epidemic has leaked, and we may need to deal with the removal of many more students before we're done.'

'Personally, I'll be glad to see the back of Ethel Hallow,' Miss Cackle stated firmly. 'She may be good for our league tables, but I'd bet that she's the source of the leak. I'm sure she didn't _entirely_ intend to be malicious,' Amelia continued magnanimously when Constance tried to protest, 'but if she _did_ write to her father and tell him everything, that was nothing more or less than flagrant disobedience!'

Constance sighed. 'Regardless, the deed is done and nothing is to be gained from wailing over it at this point. The real problem we must face is _that_,' and she pointed with a stiff finger that shook only slightly at the second sheaf of papers. '_How_ are we to survive an inspection - with Mistress _Broomhead_, of all people - when we are almost entirely devoid of magic?'

**xxx**

_I tried to resist the lure of Evil Broomhead, but it was too strong. Besides, I rather enjoy writing snark, and there should be plenty of opportunity for that. How's it going so far? Too slow? Too fast? Too episodic? Hit the button and reveal all!_


	4. Chapter 4

_Thank you, lovely reviewers. I know I still owe several people replies, and I will do that… but my internet connection threw one of its occasional wobblies last night, so I couldn't do it then. So now, I present Chapter Four…. Keep those reviews coming, they really do keep me motivated and focused! Oh, and plug alert: there's a vague reference to my WW fic _Sounding a Chord_, which can be found on my profile. You don't _need_ it, it's just my version of Constance's background. _

_Thanks to __**CirqueduGleek**__ yet again!_

**CHAPTER FOUR**

The Third years were in their form room, awaiting Miss Hardbroom for registration. At the front sat – or rather, lolled – Mildred Hubble, who was improving the shining hour with a quick snooze. Her head was cradled on her arms in the time-honoured fashion of pupils wishing to declare exhaustion or ill health, and her long plaits dangled over the other side of the desk, the ends only inches away from the floor.

She was in that cosy place halfway between waking and sleep; more than half-convinced that her dream of holidays was real. Therefore, when she was addressed in a gentle voice (a fully alert Mildred would have recognised that tone as _ominously_ gentle) she reacted accordingly.

'Catching up on a little sleep, are we?' the voice asked.

'Hmm-mm,' said Mildred, trying to snuggle more deeply into non-existent pillows.

'Perhaps we should provide you with a pillow and blankets, just so that you are comfortable,' the voice continued, acquiring a slight edge that should have served as a warning.

'Hmmmm….,' Mildred agreed happily, blissfully anticipating several more hours of shut-eye.

'Oh, for goodness' sake … OPEN YOUR EYES THIS INSTANT, MILDRED HUBBLE!'

Mildred's eyes snapped open and her body jerked back to the perpendicular with a speed that was certainly comical enough to justify the suppressed titters that arose from the back of the classroom.

'Miss Hardbroom!' she gasped, trying to gather her scattered wits.

Her form mistress pushed herself straight, using the desk as a lever. 'Congratulations on stating the blindingly obvious yet _again_, Mildred. Yes, it is I. There's no need to sound so surprised; this is a school day, although it would seem that fact has escaped your memory.' Her glare was at full strength, whatever her body might be, and Mildred visibly wilted.

'I'm sorry, Miss,' she offered, wondering what awful punishment would be imposed upon her _this_ time. Mildred knew she'd been responsible for a number of 'firsts' during her years at Cackle's, and she was certain this would be another for the list. Whoever heard of someone falling asleep with _Miss Hardbroom_ in charge?

_At least she can't do anything_ magical, Mildred told herself as she awaited her form-mistress's verdict with considerable trepidation. _Only stupid lines, detention, or scrubbing floors…_

Her eyes widened and an involuntary grin crossed her face as she was visited by a sudden flash of insight.

_HB's _never_ used magic against us_, she realised, only half listening to Miss Hardbroom's lecture on the iniquity of falling asleep during lesson hours. _Bless, she's just an old softie at heart-_

'MILDRED HUBBLE!' Miss Hardbroom hissed in a stentorian whisper. Such was its force that even the distracted Mildred jerked to attention.

She straightened her face immediately, and tried to play the innocent. 'Yes, Miss?'

Miss Hardbroom narrowed her eyes until they were dark slits. 'Five hundred lines of _I must not fall asleep during lessons_, followed by another five hundred of _I must not grin like a defective ape when my form-mistress is talking_ – and I want them _tonight_.'

'Yes, Miss Hardbroom,' Mildred acquiesced, sliding down in her seat as the prospect of any kind of free time that afternoon vanished.

Her form mistress looked as if she was going to say something more, but thought the better of it. For a split second, her upright posture faltered, and she moved several steps away from Mildred, towards the desk, where she could get a better view of the class as a whole.

'_Where_ is Maud Moonshine?' she asked in a resigned tone.

Personally, Mildred was surprised it had taken her so long to notice, but any attempt to answer was forestalled by the arrival of Maud herself.

'I'm awfully sorry, Miss,' she panted as she slipped into her place beside Mildred. 'Miss Bat wanted to see all the chanting group, and I – uh, I don't think she heard the bell.'

Miss Hardbroom's lips pursed. '_Chanting_ –' she began in derisory tones before momentarily closing her eyes. She took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. 'Never mind, Maud, never mind. There are more important things to worry about, and we've wasted nearly half our time as it is,' she went on, sending another narrow-eyed glance towards Mildred.

She turned and walked around the desk, and sank – thankfully, Mildred thought – into the chair behind it, her sticks leaned carefully against the blackboard. Then she glared around them all, more or less impartially.

'It is vital that you pull yourselves together, girls, and that you do so forthwith.' She clasped her hands on the desk, her fingers moving automatically into spell-casting position. 'We are expecting another visit from Mistress Broomhead. She will arrive at lunch –'

'_Lunch?_' exclaimed half the class in disgusted tones, while the other half cowered and pretended they weren't there.

'Lunch,' repeated Miss Hardbroom inflexibly. 'Miss Cackle and I believe that she has learned of our epidemic and its resultant effect on our collective magic-'

'No prizes for guessing _how_,' Mildred hissed in Maud's ear.

'-and she is coming here as a formality, Mildred Hubble. She will almost certainly remove our GAS this time.'

'But can't we use what we learnt about her last time?' Maud protested in response to a dig from Mildred. 'About her really being Wilhelmina Wormy or whatever it was.'

'Wormwood, Maud. It worked once; if she's brave enough to try again, chances are that it will not work again. Hecketty Broomhead is not a stupid woman,' Miss Hardbroom added, with an intensity that thoroughly unnerved her pupils. 'She will have taken what we know about her into consideration even before she sent notice of the inspection.'

'What are we going to do, Miss?' Ruby piped up.

'She's a horrible, horrible woman,' Maud declared. 'We have to do _something_.'

Miss Hardbroom looked sad, an emotion that only Mildred had seen in her before.

'We have no magic. I don't think there is anything we can do; all we can do is attempt to mitigate the effects. Accordingly, girls, as soon as we finish here you are all to go to your dormitories and clear them completely of any and all items that do not belong in the most perfectly regulated of witch schools. And that includes those – those _popstar_ posters of yours, Jadu Wali, _and_ that collection of mechanical contrivances I know you've got hidden somewhere, Ruby Cherrytree. Is that _perfectly_ clear?'

'Yes, Miss,' the form responded meekly. Even after more than two years they continued to be stunned by Miss Hardbroom's general omniscience.

Mildred ventured to raise her hand, remembering how her beloved bats had had to go into hiding the previous year in an effort to placate Mistress Broomhead, who was known to detest them. 'Please, Miss, what about Winky, Blinky and Nod?'

'And Barney,' Maud added, looking worried.

Miss Hardbroom pressed her index fingers together and raised them to her lips, her dark eyes studying the pair before her for a long moment. She gave a queer half-smile. 'I think we'll leave them where they are. After all,' she continued with a smirk, 'no-one can say that _bats_ do not belong in a school for witches!'

When she dismissed them to go to their rooms, the smirk had spread across the entire form, heartened as they were by the thought of that one miniscule token of defiance.

**xxx**

'Make sure you check the dormitories _thoroughly_, Miss Drill,' Constance reiterated for the fourth time as the mistresses went through their last-minute preparations for the upcoming inspection over tea in the staffroom.

Imogen tutted. 'Yes, Miss Hardbroom. _I know_. I'm to check for: tidiness, neatly-made beds, Fenella's room for forbidden books, Griselda's for that potion making set you seem to think she has, Ruby's for electronics, Jadu's for posters, Sybil's for –'

'Well done, Imogen,' Miss Cackle interjected before the Games mistress could list the forbidden dormitory contents of the entire school. 'You do seem to know what you're doing, and there isn't much time. Do you want to go now?'

'I think that would be best,' Imogen agreed gravely, and whipped out of the room before Constance could add anything more.

That lady glared as the door shut behind her. 'She never takes _anything_ seriously,' she complained, furiously stirring her tea. 'If Hecketty has her way we'll all be out of a job before so very long.'

'Constance,' Miss Cackle started, and something in her tone prompted the younger woman to look at her. 'We won't be. Don't forget what happened last year with Amanda Honeydew: this castle is mine. Even if our GAS is withdrawn – and I agree it probably will be – we can continue, somehow.'

'Without official backing,' Constance pointed out grimly. 'Fat lot of good that'll do the girls when they come to leave school, if they haven't got their WJC or WHC.'

Amelia patted her arm. 'Don't worry. I have a plan.' She tapped her nose and tried to look knowing. She glanced at the clock and handed Constance her sticks. 'Come along, my dear. We'd better go and greet our visitor, and you did say that Mistress Broomhead is a little obsessed with punctuality.'

'A_nd that _is the understatement of the century,' Constance said sourly as she followed her employer out of the room, her sticks clacking on the hard stone floor.

When they reached the hall, it was to find Miss Drill (impeccably attired in a formal suit for once) waiting, along with a Davina Bat who looked marginally more aware of the world around her than she had done for some days.

Constance scowled at them. 'What are _you_ doing here?'

Davina's lace-covered hands fluttered anxiously around her face. 'We're being sup-supportive.' She drew herself up to her full and limited height. 'I w-won't hide away, even if that woman doesn't like b-bats!'

'You're just right, Davina,' Imogen told her soothingly as she shot an answering frown at Constance.

Constance snorted. She shifted her weight slightly, and wished that she could abandon her sticks. Her heart thumped uneasily at the thought of exposing her frailty to a woman who would not scruple to exploit it, but her pride in her position as Cackle's Deputy Headmistress kept her where she was.

'I'm glad we're all here,' Amelia said, unwittingly uttering the thought that Constance's subconscious was grasping towards. 'I'd rather face this together.'

'Exactly,' Constance agreed with a heartiness that was only slightly false. 'Team work, that's how we do it, h'mm?' She glanced at her colleagues, and chose to ignore the variously startled and befuddled looks they were casting her in return.

She stomped the three steps it took to bring her abreast of Amelia. 'Mistress Broomhead has no concept of the value of working _together_. We can get to her that way.'

'And with bats,' she was sure she heard Imogen mutter in the background.

The clock chimed one, and, right on cue, a knock sounded on the great front door.

**xxx**

Unbeknownst to the staff, they had an audience as they awaited the arrival of their unwanted visitor. Maud and Mildred were crouched in their favoured hiding place, high above the hall in the shadows of the gallery that linked the stairs to the dormitories.

Maud eyed her friend with some disquiet when Mildred's face lit up at Miss Drill's mention of bats, but Mildred was too intent on watching the events below to say anything just then.

Mistress Broomhead's entry was typically brusque, and she shunned greetings in favour of proclaiming her intentions of scouring every square inch of Cackle's, from the highest attic down to the deepest dungeons.

'And that will be that,' she announced triumphantly in her unpleasantly metallic voice, her gimlet-like eyes switching from one staff member to the other. 'I've known for a _long_ time that this school is failing; I have no doubt that when I finish here today I will be in a position to close Cackle's forever!' She began to move towards the Great Hall, but stopped throw a glare over her shoulder. 'What are you waiting for, Miss Cackle, Constance? Chop chop!'

'Poor HB,' Maud muttered as she watched their weakened form mistress struggle to keep up with Hecketty's brisk pace. 'I bet she's wishing she had her magic back right now.'

The look Mildred sent her was fiercely determined. 'We need to get that woman out of here! She's not just mean, she's _dangerous_.'

'What do you mean, Millie?'

'She scares HB,' Mildred told her, remembering how Miss Hardbroom had leaned against the doorframe when Hecketty materialised in front of them all that day in the store room. '_Really_ scares her. That can't be good. She hurts people somehow. Well,' and her mouth firmed, 'I'm not going to let her get away with it!'

Maud sighed. 'What are you thinking?'

That seraphic smile crossed Mildred's face once again. 'We're going to do what Miss Drill said. Get her with bats!'

And she unveiled her plans to an incredulous, but ultimately willing, Maud.

**xxx**

Amelia cast her deputy a concerned look as Hecketty dragged them around the dungeons, sticking her large hooked nose into literally every nook and cranny. Amelia tried not to smirk when this more often than not resulted in a spider's web dangling from the aforesaid hooked nose, but her amusement was tempered by her worry on Constance's behalf. The younger woman was ashen, and her lips were pressed together so firmly that they disappeared into her gaunt face.

_We need to stop this marathon around the school_, Amelia thought anxiously as she watched Constance narrowly avoid going headlong when one of her sticks caught at the edge of the uneven flagstones on the floor. _Otherwise Constance will collapse despite herself, and I won't give That Woman the satisfaction…_

She glanced at her watch, and hid a smile. Perhaps that could be the way out. It was almost quarter to two, and the bell for the end of lunch would go at two sharp. Constance was due with the First years for their afternoon lesson then, and Amelia herself should be doing the theory of advanced transfiguration and transfrogrification with the Fifth.

'Have you seen everything you needed to see, Mistress Broomhead?' she asked politely as the inspector circled around the centre of the floor and came to a stop, her eyes still roving here, there and everywhere. Amelia found herself wondering what kind of incriminating evidence Broomhead thought she'd find on the crevices of the ancient stone, and decided she didn't want to know. 'It's nearly the end of the lunch hour, and –'

A satisfied smirk hovered around Hecketty's mouth, and Amelia could have kicked herself. Her attempt at subtlety had obviously failed; Hecketty's smirk broaded into a cruel smile as she looked from Amelia to Constance and back.

'_Surely_ this cannot be all, Miss Cackle?' Broomhead cooed. 'This is a large castle with a history that dates back a thousand years. Do you really expect me to believe that this one paltry room is the entire dungeon?'

Amelia's heart sank all the way down to her boots. Broomhead had clearly spent time learning the castle's layout, and now she was using it against them. 'There's more through this grille,' she admitted reluctantly, showing the inspector the narrow gate that led down a tiny dark passage to the next series of rooms.

'Well, _unlock it_, Miss Cackle,' Broomheard ordered impatiently. She tutted her irritation. 'And _you_, Constance. Hurry _up_,' she barked as the Deputy Headmistress walked towards them with agonising slowness. 'The tardier you are, the longer this will take.'

Amelia looked down at the key she held in her hand and seriously contemplated urging Broomhead in first. "Lock the door and throw away the key" had never seemed so tempting, but Broomhead anticipated her.

'Constance'll go first, and then you, Miss Cackle,' Mistress Broomhead instructed. 'I wouldn't want to get lost, would I?'

Amelia gave a hollow laugh. 'That would be a tragedy indeed, Mistress Broomhead.'

'Quite,' agreed Hecketty, oblivious to the irony, her hooked nose pointed into the air.

Amelia found herself counting the tiny spiders that still dangled there, the silken webs shimmering in the dim light. Idly, she wondered what would happen if one of the spiders crawled up Hecketty's nose…

'Finally,' the woman hissed as Constance reached them.

She stood leaning heavily on her sticks and trying desperately not to show how winded she was, but Amelia could see what the effort had cost her, and she had to fight down a surge of overpowering rage. Hecketty had them, as the saying goes, over a barrel, and they had no ready means of opposing her – and she knew it. Her pleasure in the entire situation was tangible.

'Now if we're all ready,' Broomhead began in a travesty of a teacher's classroom voice, 'let's get on with it and see what secrets you've been hiding.' Her eyes gleamed. 'Go on, Constance. Lead the way.'

Amelia gritted her teeth as Constance's dark eyes fleetingly met hers when she shuffled past in obedience to her former tutor. Never in the twenty years they had worked together had she seen such exhausted despair in her colleague's gaze. Impulsively, she reached out to help Constance over the uneven ground, and was shocked when Hecketty abruptly slapped her hand away, as if Amelia was a child illicitly raiding a cookie jar.

'I was only-' she began hotly.

'She can do it herself,' Hecketty threw back. 'She's learned self-sufficiency in a very hard school.' She sounded absurdly proud, and once again Amelia had to repress her fury.

_If this is how Constance was taught it's no wonder she is how she is_, she fumed inwardly as Hecketty mutely demanded the key to the grille, and Amelia was forced to hand it over. _It's a miracle she wasn't entirely broken, between this – this _harridan_ and that evil witch of a grandmother…_

The passage was narrow and oppressive, and Amelia was relieved that neither she nor Constance – to the best of her knowledge – suffered from claustrophobia. The only sounds were the uneven clacks as Constance's sticks hit the floor ahead, and behind her, almost in time with the clack-clack-clack, Hecketty's rapid and excited breathing.

Amelia's skin crawled, and she was ready to cheer with relief when a change in the texture of the floor underfoot indicated they were moving out of the passage. She had only a fleeting moment to hope that Constance would remember the step when the inevitable happened. One of Constance's sticks caught on a rough patch on the timeworn floor, causing both crutches to go flying, and Constance herself to crash brutally into the unforgiving castle walls.

**xxx**

_Heh. Yep, I seem to have succumbed to the 'let's all beat HB up' syndrome. Or have I? *disappears cackling*_


	5. Chapter 5

_I had a lot of fun with this. I hope enjoy it too! _

**CHAPTER FIVE**

Mildred peeked around the open door of the staffroom, a cardbox box under one arm and the ever faithful Maud at her side.

'Is Miss Bat there?' she asked of Miss Drill, who was sitting, apparently alone, at the big table, every line shrieking despondency.

'I'm he-ere!' trilled Miss Bat's voice from behind the door, and the girls grinned quickly at each other as they entered the room.

'We thought you might've gone into your cupboard,' Maud began apologetically with a glance towards the chanting mistress's favourite hiding place. 'What with Mistress Broomhead being here and all.'

'That's where I would like to be,' Miss Bat confessed, her eyelashes fluttering wildly. 'But you see, Miss _Hardbroom_ locked the door the morning, and put the key – imagine, the key to _my_ cupboard – on that belt of hers.'

Mildred beamed. 'I'm sorry for you, Miss Bat, but I'm glad for us. It would make this awfully hard, otherwise.'

Miss Bat looked puzzled while Miss Drill's head snapped up, her eyes narrowing.

'What are you two planning?' she asked suspiciously, looking not unlike Miss Hardbroom at that moment. 'Things are bad enough without any of your madcap plans making them worse –'

'Oh, ignore Miss Drill,' Miss Bat broke in, putting an arm around each girl and ushering them to a seat. 'Make yourselves comfy and tell us all about it – not _that_ one, Mildred, it's broken. Try the one further down.'

Mildred nodded gratefully as she took another seat, prodding it first to check its stability before she sat down, the box on the table in front of her.

'So,' prompted Miss Bat, bringing her hands together in a prayer-like gesture, 'what's the idea?'

Mildred and Maud exchanged a nervous glance.

'We were thinking about what you said in the hall, Miss Drill,' Mildred began, eagerness coming to the fore. 'About getting at Broomhead with bats.'

'She doesn't like bats,' Miss Bat agreed sorrowfully, her body drooping.

Maud patted the little teacher on the arm. 'But that's a _good_ thing, Miss Bat. We're going to use it.' She looked from one mistress to the other. 'Where are they now?'

'Broomhead's dragged them off the dungeons,' Miss Drill responded with a sigh.

'But Miss Hardbroom-' Mildred objected, and the Games mistress nodded, her features unwontedly grim.

'I know. She's doing it deliberately, to wear them down, _especially_ Miss Hardbroom.'

Mildred's young face went hard. 'In that case, there's no time to waste.' She turned to the chanting mistress. 'We need to go down there, but we need you, too. Will you come?'

'You want _me?_' For a moment, Miss Bat looked girlishly pleased, but almost at once her lips began to tremble. '_I_ can't do anything with Broomhead, what do you want me for?'

Maud leaned forward, her expression filled with sudden mischief. 'Do you remember that holiday you took last year, the one in Inner Mongolia?'

'Of course. I would hardly forget it. It was _wonderful_….' Miss Bat gave a dreamy smile and the girls looked at each other in alarm. They could not afford to allow the little lady to sink into a world of her own.

Mildred gently shook Miss Bat's arm to rouse her. 'Do you remember the chants you taught us? The ones that shook the school and knocked the slates off the roof?'

Miss Drill groaned at the memory. 'I do. Those chants were horrendous, Mildred. My ears were ringing for days.'

'Exactly!' Mildred emphasised, her face alight. 'They upset the bats, too. It took ages for them to settle down again.'

'Let me get this straight,' Miss Bat interjected in such uncharacteristically business like tones that they all turned to look at her, 'you want me to do the Mongolian chants in the hope of – what? Upsetting bats?' She sounded justifiably puzzled.

For answer, Mildred opened her box. 'Not just any bats, Miss Bat. _These _bats,' and she tilted it slightly so that the teachers could see the four bats nestled within.

The girls watched as a slow smile spread across the faces of Miss Drill and Miss Bat. The latter jumped to her feet with airy grace, and flung out her hands. 'Then what are we waiting for? Come on, come on, come _o-oon!_'

And once Mildred had collected her precious box, she grabbed the girls and rushed them out of the room and towards the dungeons at a speed that left them dazed and breathless.

**xxx**

Deep in the dark and airless bowels of the castle, Amelia Cackle was sitting on the stone floor, her unconscious deputy in her arms. Never before had Amelia been so frightened, and never before had she felt so vulnerable.

Hecketty Broomhead loomed over them, her figure transformed into something infinitely monstrous and menacing by the twisting shadows and flares of light cast by the single lantern at her feet. Her face was almost entirely hidden, and this discomfited Amelia further, causing her to feel that she was alone with some entity that was barely human.

'So this is what you've come to,' Hecketty bellowed, her voice bouncing off the walls and echoing in the caverns in a suitably eerie fashion.

Amelia exhaled a silent breath of relief. Hecketty's silence had unnerved and disoriented her; as long as she could keep the other woman talking she would be able to control her panic.

'We're still here,' she said as lightly as she could. 'It takes more than a little bureaucracy to defeat us!' she went on, the Cackle stubbornness stiffening her spine. 'There's been a Cackle academy of some kind in this castle for more than three hundred years, Hecketty Broomhead, and you're not going to finish us off!'

'Brave words, Miss Cackle,' Hecketty hissed. 'Brave words indeed. Don't speak too soon, Amelia – I may call you that, mayn't I?'

'I can hardly prevent you,' Amelia told her icily. 'I take it I may do likewise?'

'_Naturally_, my dear Amelia,' Hecketty cooed, her tone oozing sugar and slime. 'Naturally. Let us get on, shall we? In the past years the standard of witching education has fallen. Fallen terribly! Our schools are rotten, and the rot must be dug out _without delay_ and _without mercy!_' The shadows and flares trembled as she vibrated with her fervour.

Amelia said nothing. Her fingers had found the pulse point at her deputy's neck, and she left them there, the steady beating of the younger woman's heart providing some reassurance that she was not alone.

'Tradition, standards, history: in too many schools, they have been betrayed and pushed aside, one by one,' Hecketty continued ranting, the gist of which Amelia heard many times before, albeit without the venom that permeated every word that passed the inspector's lips. 'Luckily, times have changed, and these things _will no longer be tolerated!_'

'All right. What are you going to do about it?' Amelia demanded.

'Hah.' A gleam of white in the near darkness as the lantern-light caught Hecketty's bared teeth. 'It's simple, my dear: we suspect everyone, no school is exempt.' She moved closer to Amelia, close enough that Amelia could feel the fabric of Broomhead's long dress brush her ankles, and she shivered and repressed the desire to move away.

_She's a predator_, she remembered Constance saying the year before. _As long as you can pretend you're not afraid, you've got a chance. If you don't…_ Constance had refused to elaborate further, but she had said enough to assist Amelia now.

'Even the merest _hint_ of sloppiness is enough to warrant an inspection,' Hecketty continued passionately. 'Thus far, only _two_ schools have passed with flying colours. All of the others have lamentably failed to meet our expectations.'

'What happened to them?' Amelia asked, hoping that she sounded no more than casually interested.

There was that gleam of teeth again. 'At best, they were stripped of their GAS. At worst… well, you understand, don't you, the power of examples?'

'What did you do to them?' Amelia pressed, no longer caring that her voice had started to shake. It did not matter whether Hecketty sensed her fear or not; she would still be the predator and Cackle's her prey.

Hecketty bent down so that her face was in Amelia's. An overpowering stench of sickly sweet perfume washed over Amelia, and she suddenly understood why Constance reacted so strongly to Davina's endless flowers and oils.

'Ah,' Hecketty breathed. 'That would be telling, wouldn't it?' Her glance dropped downwards, to the still oblivious Constance. 'She looks so peaceful, doesn't she?'

Amelia's arms tightened around her deputy. 'You leave her alone, Heck – _Wilhelmina!_' she flung at the other woman.

'Is that the best you can do?' Hecketty sounded amused, and Amelia gritted her teeth. 'Oh, there's one thing you might like to know,' the inspector added as she straightened. She paused, then: 'Pentangle's was closed last week.'

Amelia's breath caught in her chest and she slumped against the walls, gasping, Contance's head lolling on her shoulder. Once again, she was swamped with despair: Pentangle's was Cackle's old enemy and occasional ally. Pentangle's had seemed to be everything Cackle's was not: how could they have fallen?

Hecketty continued to drip her stream of poison and fear, but Amelia was no longer listening. Instead, she was trying to plan. The school in its current incarnation was undeniably finished; Hecketty had made no secret of her intentions and they were in no position to prevent her from turning them into reality.

_Perhaps it's just as well we've all lost our magic, _she thought dully. _Surely no-one will care if we go, if we leave. Some of the girls will have to stay with us. We can go into hiding…go to France, perhaps. _

'Amelia!' Hecketty shouted. 'You are not listening!'

Amelia tried to protest that she had been listening when there rose a most unearthly screech, a sound that rippled along Amelia's scalp and tingled the hairs of her neck, and she raised one hand from supporting Constance to clap against her ear.

'What was that?' Hecketty demanded, the sound of her voice obliterated by the wail.

Amelia shrugged, wishing that she could clap both hands to her head, anything to ameliorate the shrieking. _Even the very walls of the castle are trembling with it_, she thought numbly, and that point her head snapped up in realisation.

'This is _your_ doing!' Hecketty screamed inaudibly.

Amelia shifted on the floor, ensuring that Constance was comfortable, and smiled. She no longer wished to block out the noise: it meant help was coming, it meant freedom.

Besides, it was rather fun watching Hecketty try to escape it. She tried to cast a noise-cancelling spell, but that failed. Then she tried a bubble-headed charm, and that succeeded, but perhaps a little too well: she gasped for breath and fell to her knees. Amelia watched curiously until the woman managed to break the spell and breathe normally again.

Meanwhile, the shrieking was getting louder and coming closer, and Hecketty began to whimper.

'I don't think we're finished with you yet,' Amelia said, knowing the other woman could not hear. Her smile broadened as the narrow passage behind them slowly filled with light, and several small winged black shapes emerged, flapping wildly.

'_Bats!_' howled Mistress Broomhead as they circled her head. 'Bats! I don't like bats!' She tried to move away, but the bats continued to swirl and flap. Amelia watched as she cast a vanishing spell, only to find that the number of bats doubled with every attempt, and all of them were fixated on their caster.

Amelia sat with her fallen deputy in her arms and tittered, closer to hysteria than she had ever been in all of her sixty-odd years. It was surreal; it was amazing; it was one of the funniest things she had ever seen, to watch the fearsome and austere inspector run frantically around the dungeon, trying to escape from her own personal nemesis, the sound of her screaming a descant to the banshee-like howls that were growing louder by the second.

And then a Bat of a human kind erupted out of the passage, and Amelia winced for the integrity of the castle foundations as the wailing reached a crescendo, before stopping so abruptly that Amelia wondered if she would ever be able to hear normally again.

Yet through the dimness of lantern light and tinnitus induced fog she was just able to make out Davina literally running circles around the increasingly distraught Hecketty, her black cloak flapping in a manner that was distinctly batlike.

'Go away!' she heard Davina shout, and the shout turned into a chant that went all the way up the scale: 'Go away, go away, go a_waaaay_' – and Amelia had to move her legs from the entrance to the passageway when Hecketty stumbled over them in her haste to escape, pursued by her spell-conjured bats and Davina, who was still alternately shouting and singing threats.

Too stunned to move, Amelia sat and blinked as the light faded until she was in darkness.

Then a soft voice from her left shoulder said, 'Well, it seems that Davina is not so flabby after all.' There was an exasperated sigh, followed by: 'And now I shall have to _apologise!_' and the disgust in that was the last straw for Amelia: she clutched Constance to her and laughed until she cried.

**xxx**

Miss Drill quite literally shoved Mistress Broomhead out the front door, with Miss Bat still swooping and chanting deliriously around the hall. The stairs and corridors were filled with girls who had swarmed there to see what all the fuss was about. Feuds and rows were temporarily put aside and the school cheered lustily when Miss Drill, aided by a willing Mildred and Maud, slammed and locked the huge oak door.

A familiar voice broke into the hysteria: weaker still than it should be, but instantly recognisable.

'What is all this shouting about, may I ask?' it asked, and guilty silence fell instantly.

The phalanx of girls parted like a sea, revealing their Headmistress and Deputy Headmistress standing side by side at the top of the stairs that lead done to the dungeons.

'Miss Hardbroom!' Mildred exclaimed from where she stood next to Miss Drill, her face split in a delighted grin. 'You're OK!'

'After a fashion,' her form mistress agreed sourly as she made her way to stand before Mildred. She was still pale, still too thin, and still leaning on her sticks, but she looked marginally better than she had for weeks, and unexpectedly invigorated.

'Well?' she demanded after a long moment where neither she nor Mildred said a word. 'Would you like to explain what has just occurred?'

'It wasn't just Mildred,' Maud put in indignantly. 'I was in on it too, and so were Miss Bat and Miss Drill.'

Miss Hardbroom's eyes flicked in her direction. 'You don't need to tell me _that_, Maud; it is all too clear who Mildred's accomplices were on this occasion.' Her eyes narrowed. 'I am still waiting for an explanation.'

'Now just a moment-' Miss Drill tried, as Mildred burst out, 'We just wanted to get her away from here.'

Miss Hardbroom did not even glance at her colleague, all of her attention remaining focused on her most troublesome pupil. 'And did it not occur to you, Mildred Hubble, that your interference could make matters _worse?_'

Mildred's face fell. 'I thought it wouldn't matter,' she muttered, scuffing at the floor with the toes of her boots. 'You said we were going to lose our GAS anyway.'

'Hmmm,' said Miss Hardbroom. 'As indeed we almost certainly have; isn't that so, Miss Cackle?'

The Headmistress nodded and moved to stand near her deputy once again. 'I'm afraid it is, Miss Hardbroom.' Her gaze travelled the rows of newly sober schoolgirls that filled the hall. 'The WTC will try to force us to close. Some of you will almost certainly be removed by your parents. However, I promise you one thing: as long as the castle is in my hands, whether there is a school here or not, you will be welcome here.'

She glanced at Mildred and Maud. 'And thanks to these two, Miss Drill and most especially, Miss Bat, I don't think we will be troubled by a visit from Mistress Broomhead for the foreseeable future.'

The girls cheered again, and Miss Cackle let them have their heads for a few minutes before raising her hand for quiet. As usual, she was ignored, and – also as usual – the girls responded instantly to the soft but still insistent command to that effect from Miss Hardbroom.

Miss Cackle nodded at her. 'Thank you, Miss Hardbroom. Now, I must confess to being curious. Mildred, Maud, Miss Bat: what did you do?'

Mildred gave her trademark toothily joyful beam. 'We did it with bats, Miss.'

'I helped,' Miss Bat screeched from where she was standing on the gallery above, and everyone turned to look up at her. 'Mildred there, and Maud, they came to me and said, _can you be a bat, Miss Bat_, and I nodded' – she nodded her head so vigorously that her eyelashes fluttered – 'and said, _of course_, and what did they want. And they said, _just flap about and sing those Mongolian chants_, so…'

She swooped down the stairs, her cloak flying wide like bats' wings, 'That's what I did. And it worked!' Her hands clasped at her chest and she sank down almost to the floor. 'We got rid of her!'

'With a little help from some _real_ bats,' Miss Hardbroom put in, weighting each word equally. 'Mildred Hubble, Maud Moonshine: am I right in thinking that Winky, Blinky, Nod and Barney had their part to play?'

The girls nodded, and Miss Cackle looked surprised.

'I didn't realise you were aware of the bats, Constance,' she interjected.

Her deputy gave her a half smile. 'I wasn't unconscious the _entire_ time, Miss Cackle. In any case, the din that Miss Bat and Mistress Broomhead made between them would have woken the dead!'

Miss Hardbroom turned back Mildred and Maud. 'Congratulations, girls. Very well done,' she went on as the pair frankly gaped at her, their jaws dropping. 'You took the hint I gave you this morning _and_ acted on it in a timely fashion.' Her tone was warmly approving but switched back to its usual no-nonsense tenor almost at once: 'Oh, for goodness sake you two, close your mouths and stop that unladylike gawping!'

The girls obeyed on the word, their jaws snapping shut with an audible _click_.

Miss Cackle came to put an arm around each of them. 'Let's just say the whole affair has been a triumph in staff-pupil co-operation – and without the aid of magic,' she stated with a smile. 'I think some kind of reward is in order, don't you, Miss Hardbroom?'

'If we must, Miss Cackle,' Miss Hardbroom sighed, but the girls were quick to notice that the usual opprobrium that she attached to such a statement was lacking.

'Excellent!' Miss Cackle beamed. 'In celebration of the fact that we have disposed of an enemy, and to acknowledge that Cackle's Academy will continue _no matter what_, I hereby declare the rest of today - a holiday!'

And the girls, lead by Miss Drill and Miss Bat, burst into another round of cheering.

**xxx**

_A cheerful ending for once, and no cliffs (just for you, LongVodka!), but don't let go of your seats just yet..._


	6. Chapter 6

_This chapter's a little shorter than usual, but only by a smidgeon. A definite change in pace before we pick up again…_

**CHAPTER SIX**

It was several days after Mistress Broomhead's aborted inspection, and Constance Hardbroom was sitting the staffroom, enjoying a moment of solitude in the unwontedly warm room. The night before had seen the first snowfall of the winter, and the castle was currently shrouded in a blanket of white, an illusion of beauty and security. Consequently, Miss Cackle had insisted on lighting a fire, and even Constance had to admit that the sensation of warmth radiating across her back was a pleasant one.

Her pen travelled over book after book, scoring or ticking as appropriate, but for once Constance's mind was not entirely on her work. She was tense, knowing from painful experience that Mistress Broomhead did not countenance defeat, and – unlike Amelia – she was not convinced that the loss of their GAS was all they had to fear from the WTC.

Constance frowned and sighed as she corrected Mildred Hubble's latest attempt at a potions essay. It had crossing outs where Mildred's volatile mind had changed tack at the last possible moment – really, couldn't the girl get to grips with concept of _planning?_ – and more than a few splodges of ink, several of which obscured Mildred's writing to the point that it was almost not worth marking. Constance contented herself with putting a red line through the entire essay and adding a tart comment at the bottom to the effect that if Mildred could not be bothered to present her work neatly, she could not see why she should be expected to mark it. Not that she thought those actions would have any impact; Mildred was so accustomed to such reprimands that they rolled off her like water off a duck's back.

All the same, as Amelia had once observed, it was difficult not to be fond of the worst witch in the school. Her faults were many, but she was, as Amelia frequently opined in her defence, 'rather sweet'. Constance repressed a snort as she put Mildred's book to one side and drew another to her: Ethel Hallow's. Her hand hovered over it for a moment before she put it aside firmly.

Ethel was technically no longer a pupil at Cackle's; she and Sybil were simply waiting for the snow to end so that their parents could collect them and their belongings via the Muggle means that Mr Hallow seemed to prefer. If Constance was honest with herself, she was not sorry. Ethel had always been a disruptive force within her cohort, but her genuine intelligence and diligence in academic matters had inevitably engendered respect, if not liking, from the similarly minded Deputy Headmistress.

She looked at the remaining books in the pile and tutted, hating how unsettled she felt. The state of the room did nothing for her temper either, for Davina had strewn holly leaves all over the floor that morning (why, only Davina knew). The armchair was almost buried under the pile of clothes Imogen had seen fit to bring into school with her that morning, and Amelia was responsible for the haphazard heap of books in one corner. Constance narrowed her eyes and flexed her hands automatically, even while her conscious mind regretted the loss of her ability to simply _zap _everything into place with one snap of the fingers.

She glanced out of the window again, noting the white dervish outside, and made a decision. She gathered her books together into a neat pile – with Ethel's still out – and reached into her bag for her writing case. It was Saturday morning; no-one would be making any demands on her time for at least another hour, and she owed her cousin Minerva a letter, assuming she could get it sent.

With a typical economy of movement, she uncapped the fountain pen she kept for just this purpose – not even for Minerva would Constance consent to writing with those messy and unhygienic quills – and began her screed.

She had just reached a pleasant rhythm when she was disturbed by a knock on the door, and she expelled a breath of annoyance.

'Come in,' she called, sparing a moment to be grateful for the fact that her voice had improved, even if it was still not at full strength.

Fenella Feverfew slipped through a barely opened door – something that annoyed Constance in itself; why couldn't the girls enter a room properly? – and stood, her expression determined and her arms cradling a worn leather volume.

'_Well?_' Constance demanded when the girl said nothing.

'I was in the library this morning, reading, and I found this,' Fenella began, opening the book at a specific page with the smooth expertise born of long practice. She put it down on the table next to Constance. 'Does Miss Cackle know about it?'

Constance squinted at the tiny print and ignored the little voice in her mind that told her she should consider a visit to the optician in the not too distant future. 'It's the rules of the WTC,' she said, glancing swiftly at her pupil. 'What of it?'

'_This_,' Fenella said, pointing to the microscopically tiny footnote at the bottom of the page. 'It's linked to the statement about GAS.'

'Hmmm,' said Constance, trying not to peer too obviously at the page. 'I really don't think that – _oh_.'

'Exactly,' Fenella put in eagerly. 'That's what I thought too. What are we going to do?'

Constance heaved an inward sigh and wished everyone would stop asking her that question. 'The first thing is to inform Miss Cackle. I am sure she is not aware of this; indeed, I wasn't aware of it myself,' she admitted, darting a look towards Fenella that warned against gloating of _any_ kind.

'This explains why we haven't heard anything more from Mistress Broomhead,' she went on, her mind working furiously. 'She doesn't need to tell _us_ anything. All she has to do is remove us from the list of schools with GAS at the WTC headquarters – and our wards drop instantly.'

'Weren't the wards affected by everyone losing their magic?' Fenella ventured. 'If they're magical, surely –'

'They would only be affected if they were imposed by someone within the castle,' Miss Hardbroom responded absently as she tried to calculate the possible repercussions of this. 'As they weren't, they remained in place, protecting us – until now.'

Fenella looked nervous. 'Do you think they've already gone?'

The sense of unease that had haunted Constance since Mistress Broomhead's peremptory departure escalated another notch.

'I don't think there's any doubt,' she told her pupil seriously. 'You saw how Mistress Broomhead left the school; she's not a woman to endure such humiliation without instigating immediate retaliation.' She repressed the soul-deep shiver that wanted to escape, knowing that such a clear sign of disquiet from her would only unnerve Fenella further.

The girl's gaze went past Constance to the snow falling outside. 'I suppose we should be grateful for the weather,' she commented. 'If we can't go out, no-one else can come in.'

Constance did not reply at once. She knew that a witch or wizard in full possession of their powers would make light work of the wild snowstorm outside. Instead, she closed the book and put it aside, next to her pile of exercise books.

'With your permission, Fenella, I shall hold onto this to show Miss Cackle,' she began, her tone making it clear that there was no question of Fenella denying the requested permission. 'In the meantime, you had better turn your attention to other subjects – such as your potions project.' She allowed a thin smile to slip out. 'I am expecting something truly spectacular from you and Griselda this year.'

Fenella's brown head dipped so that Constance could not see her face. 'We're not working together any more, Miss Hardbroom.' She glanced up, her expression oddly blank. 'May I go now?'

'You may,' Constance assented, her frown back in place as she watched the girl leave, and rubbed her arms, chilled despite the heat of the room.

She glanced at the clock: Fenella had cost her a precious fifteen minutes, but if she went quickly she would still be able to say all that needed to be communicated. And then… the letter would need to be sent, for whatever good it might do.

**xxx**

It was half an hour before the bell for lunch, and Amelia was sitting in her office, glumly trying to reduce her desk to some kind of order. Her tummy grumbled loudly and she cast a longing glance at the clock, and sighed when it resolutely remained at quarter past twelve.

A letter with the logo of the WTC branded across it peeked through the detritus, and Amelia grimaced and fished it out with her index finger and thumb. 'There's no question where _you're_ going,' she muttered, and she scrunched it into a ball and chucked it into the fire. Her mood lifted when she saw she'd succeeded placing it where she wanted it, and she watched triumphantly as the little ball glowed amber and crimson before fading to black and crumbling into nothingness.

'That's what'll happen to all your communications in future,' she said aloud. 'Straight into the fire they'll go.'

_Now, where did I put that Ministry paperwork?_ she wondered, guiltily relieved that Constance had elected the spend the morning elsewhere. Tidying up was always so much easier when her deputy wasn't looming over her, smirking knowingly. _Mustn't lose the confirmation that the girls have been registered for their OWL exams or I'll never hear the end of it…_

She had just swept a pile of papers off her desk – it was very much the quickest way of finding anything – when the distinctive sound of clacking in the corridor outside made her freeze.

_Constance_, she thought gloomily as she frantically tried to scrabble the papers together and replace them on the desk. _Typical…_

The door flew open, and Constance entered, shutting the door behind her with her usual firmness.

'I was just-' Amelia gabbled, but she interrupted herself when Constance turned to face her, her expression at its grimmest. 'What is it? What's happened _now?_'

'Headmistress, we're in trouble,' Constance announced abruptly as she sat down on the hard chair that faced Amelia's usual seat, her newly solitary stick beside her.

Amelia repressed the desire to be sarcastic as she dumped a second load of papers on her desk. 'I'm quite aware of that. Is there any new trouble on the horizon?'

Constance watched her. 'You seem to have the remains of a typewriter ribbon in your hair,' she pointed out, _a propros_ of nothing in particular.

Her employer sighed and swiped at her head as she sat down, hoping that would suffice. 'Don't keep me in suspense,' she ordered, once Constance had nodded her approval.

'Fenella has uncovered something rather disturbing,' the Deputy Headmistress began. 'In the WTC's rule book, there's a addendum to the effect that the wards affixed by the WTC remain in place only as long as the school in question retains its status. If that status is revoked for any reason, the wards fall instantly.'

Amelia frowned as she combed her fingers through her straggly grey locks, scattering the last few fragments of clingy ribbon. 'What wards? This is the first I've heard of them.'

'I must confess I was not aware of them either,' Constance admitted. 'More research is needed; I may set Fenella on it. I think that girl needs a distraction,' she went on. 'She's brooding over her split with Griselda.'

'I don't like that split,' Amelia said seriously. 'Not one bit. I know many of the girls have been at each others' throats lately, but they don't worry me. Even Enid Nightshade's alliance with Drusilla Paddock is a minor detail, especially now that we're getting rid of Ethel Hallow. Fenella and Griselda, however…'

'I'm sure it's something trivial,' Constance said dismissively. 'You know how teenage girls are.'

_Not _those_ teenage girls_, Amelia thought but did not say. 'The wards?' she said instead.

'Wards are a form of magical protection,' Constance began, moving easily into teaching mode. 'They provide an unseen shield around a place or a person, repelling all those who might wish it, or them, harm.'

'It hasn't worked very well so far, has it,' Amelia muttered. 'What about Hecketty – or my own dear sister?'

'Hecketty Broomhead would be recognised by the wards as a member of the WTC,' Constance explained. 'Agatha… would be recognised as _you_.'

Amelia spluttered in indignation. 'We're nothing alike!'

'The wards do not distinguish character,' her deputy continued. 'They operate by filtering biological and magical profiles. And Agatha, as your twin sister, is similar enough to you on both those counts that she can pass _as_ you. As we have already discovered to our cost.'

'It might be time to consider a witchover,' Amelia mumbled, thoroughly disgruntled by this revelation.

'That would make no difference,' Constance said patiently, and Amelia could practically hear the rolled eyes in her tone. 'A witchover makes superficial changes only.'

'Huh.' Amelia sank into thought, only vaguely aware that Constance was saying something about being vulnerable without either wards or magic, and that tickled a memory.

'Ripe for the plucking,' she said suddenly, ruthlessly interrupting her deputy in full flow. 'That's what your cousin said.'

Constance's finely arched black brows contracted in a rare physical show of anxiety. 'But by whom?' she whispered.

'That's the question, isn't it?' Amelia studied the younger woman. 'Constance, what do you know about – what was it? – oh yes, Voldymord.'

Her deputy blinked in clear confusion. 'Voldy – oh, you mean Voldemort!' Amelia was startled to see her wince as the name echoed around the room. 'Or He Who Must Not Be Named as he is more properly known,' she corrected hurriedly, her eyes skittering across the room as if she was afraid they might be overheard.

'Why?' Amelia asked, puzzled by the furtiveness of Constance's response. 'I'd never heard of him before your cousin mentioned him.'

Constance sighed and ran a hand over her face. 'He was a wizard who dreamed of ruling over both the wizarding and non-wizarding worlds,' she began. 'He planned to turn the Muggles into slaves at best. He believed that all magical families who were too close to Muggles, or had Muggle blood, were blood traitors, and should be culled for the good of the wider wizarding world. There was a war,' she went on softly. 'A guerrilla war. Many people died, and many survived only to wish they had died. The name became … almost a curse in its own right. He was defeated sixteen years ago by a baby boy named Harry Potter.'

'A baby?' Amelia repeated, startled.

Constance's thin smile reappeared. 'A baby. Minerva says that he's the only person to have ever survived the Killing Curse.' Her smile flickered at Amelia's indrawn breath. 'I see you understand.'

'Not entirely,' Amelia admitted. 'But for a baby to survive _Avada Kedavra_, and to defeat the wizard who cast it… that's old magic. The oldest magic of all some say,' she went on softly, her gaze turning vacant. Then it sharpened once again and refocused on her deputy, examining the younger woman over the top of her glasses. 'But this person who should not be named is back, is that it?'

'So I believe,' Constance admitted reluctantly. 'However, we escaped unscathed sixteen years ago and there's no reason why we should not do so now.'

'That's true,' Amelia agreed absently. 'But it is disquieting when we are so uniquely vulnerable at this time.' She shivered, and looked at her dancing fire. 'It makes me wonder - '

'What?' Constance prompted as the word hung in the air.

Before Amelia could answer, the door flew open to reveal a distraught Griselda Blackwood, followed by Mildred Hubble, who was soaking wet and managed to fall into the office by the simple means of tripping over her own undone bootlaces.

'_Girls!_' protested Miss Cackle in annoyance, while Miss Hardbroom boomed, 'What is the meaning of this?' in almost her old style.

'There's someone outside, Miss Cackle,' Griselda panted as Mildred attempted to untangle her arms, legs, and hair. 'I don't know how she got here through the snow, but she's in an _awful_ state. The kids found her next to the broomshed when they went out to build a snowman.'

Miss Cackle was on her feet at once. 'Who is it?'

Mildred blinked up at her from the floor. 'I'm not sure, Miss Cackle, but I _think_ it might be that Pentangle's girl I turned into a chicken last term,' she said apologetically. She bit her lip and went on in a voice so quiet that they had to strain to hear her. 'She looks more than awful, Miss. She looks nearly _dead_.'

**xxx**

_Dum-dum-dum! I hope this chapter hasn't been _too _confusing for those unacquainted with Potter, but I think it gives the gist of what's needed. Oh, well, we'll see soon enough…_


	7. Chapter 7

_This chapter continues straight on from the last, so you may need to refresh! Thanks so much for all the reviews and comments - they're amazing, and they're fuelling me through this in literally record time. I _think_ I replied to everyone, but apologies and much grovelling if I missed you!_

**CHAPTER SEVEN**

Miss Cackle acted immediately. 'I'll go and sort out a room. Girls, take Miss Hardbroom to - to our visitor, and give her whatever help she requests.' She bustled out of her office on the word, leaving her pupils and her deputy staring at each other in frozen silence.

Miss Hardbroom moved first. 'What are you staring at?' she demanded as she used her stick to push herself erect. 'Griselda – _move!_'

'Wh-what, Miss Hardbroom?' the Fourth year stammered.

The Deputy Headmistress heaved an exaggerated sigh of exasperation. 'I need you to show me where Miss Swoop is, if it is indeed she,' she added with a swift glance at Mildred, who still on the floor trying to untangle the unholy mess her bootlaces were in. 'I am not psychic!'

She turned away and Griselda muttered, 'You could've fooled me!' under her breath, eliciting a hastily suppressed giggle from Mildred as the latter finally got to her feet.

'I hope someone is bringing Miss – er – Swoop inside,' Miss Hardbroom commented grimly as they headed for the hall.

'Will you be able to help her, Miss?' Mildred asked, her anxiety displayed in her fingers twiddling with the ends of one long braid.

Her form mistress darted a glance at her. 'That I cannot tell you until I have seen her – oh, for heaven's _sake!_' she ejaculated as she saw tall Fenella manhandle a limp figure through the front door with the assistance of assorted over-enthusiastic First years and Jadu Wali. 'Griselda, go and help Fenella. Lay the patient down gently – _gently_, girls! Mildred, run up to the linen cupboard and grab some blankets – and make sure you double tie your laces before you come down again, girl! The last thing we need is _you_ falling down the stairs!'

Mildred needed no second telling, moving with the fleetness she often exhibited in times of crisis. Miss Hardbroom mentally rolled her eyes as she laboriously knelt down next to the still girl on the cold floor.

'Was she like this when you found her?' she snapped out, shooting a fierce look at the nearest pupil, a tiny First year with a brown pixie-like crop of hair and a disconcerting degree of composure for an eleven year old.

'Yes, Miss Hardbroom,' the child told her calmly. 'We tried to wake her but it didn't work, so we put our cloaks over her and ran for help.'

'Very sensible of you,' the Deputy Headmistress approved with a nod, her fingers reaching for a pulse at the Pentangle girl's neck. 'Now go and get dried off.' She glanced up and frowned at the gaggle of First years remaining, clearly fixated by the whole scene. 'What are you children doing here? This is not a street show!'

'I'll move them, Miss Hardbroom,' Jadu put in hastily, doing just that.

'At the double, Jadu. Fenella and Griselda, stay where you are!'

'Yes, Miss Hardbroom,' the Fourth years responded in dutiful chorus.

Constance was scarcely listening, all of her attention focused instead on the girl who lay before her. Mildred was correct, she noted: their unexpected visitor _was_ Deirdre Swoop. She had distinguished herself on her last visit to Cackle's by getting involved in a magical row with Enid Nightshade, an altercation that culminated in Mildred inadvertently turning her into a chicken. Yet it was difficult to reconcile the bumptious sixteen year old Constance had met on that occasion with the beaten figure before her now.

Deirdre looked much thinner than Constance remembered, the hollows at her cheekbones and the circles about her eyes emphasising the girl's heavy bone structure. Livid scratches ran over every visible inch of skin, deep and angry against her pallor. Constance's gaze narrowed as she leaned closer to examine one particularly nasty gash across the girl's cheek, and she frowned. The unconsciousness, she hoped, was nothing to worry over: Deirdre's pulse was regular and strong, and she'd already emitted several groans that indicated she could be returning to awareness. The rest, however…

The sound of running footsteps made her look up, and she drew back as Mildred appeared, her arms full of blankets.

'I got them, Miss Hardbroom,' she panted, and Constance noted with relief that the girl had obeyed the order to tie her laces. 'What will I do with them?'

'Give one to Fenella, and help me lay the other across our patient,' the mistress instructed. 'That's it. Now go and find the rest of your class, Mildred, and _stay__there_ until you are ordered to do otherwise, do I make myself clear?'

Any response Mildred might have made was covered by the arrival of Miss Cackle, trotting briskly across the courtyard. 'The room's ready, Constance,' she puffed as she came up to them, forgetting the formalities. 'How is she?'

Constance rose slowly to her feet, using the stick as a lever, and looked at the shorter woman. 'She does not seem to be in any danger at this time,' she said in a non-committal tone. 'However, she will be the better for a comfortable place to rest. Fenella, Griselda, you've done First Aid work – Mildred Hubble, _why_ are you still here?'

Mildred blushed, but she stood her ground, her eyes going from her form mistress to her headmistress and back. 'Please, Miss Cackle, Miss Hardbroom, I was just thinking: shouldn't we get Miss Drill?'

'We can't, Mildred,' Miss Cackle told her kindly. 'She's not in school this weekend. Now off you go!'

'Honestly, that _girl_,' Constance muttered as Mildred finally obeyed. 'Just because _she__'__s_ got her head in the clouds doesn't mean that we do. You two,' she went on more loudly, turning the full intensity of her gaze on the pair of Fourth years, 'stretcher drill, _now_.'

'You haven't told us where we're going,' Griselda pointed out with the easy self-assurance that often verged on impertinence as far her deputy headmistress was concerned.

'It's the old still-room behind the potions lab,' Miss Cackle interjected. 'We don't want to take her downstairs in her condition, and there's a bed in there anyway.'

Deirdre moaned, her eyelids fluttering, and Miss Cackle bent down to pat her hand, hoping to rouse her further. 'Deirdre, can you hear me? Can you tell us what happened?'

The girl moaned again, and fell back into unconsciousness.

'Clearly not,' the Headmistress sighed as she straightened up, a line of worry deepening between her brows. 'All right, Fenella and Griselda. You may move her now.'

**xxx**

Once upon a time, an order given to the Fenella-and-Griselda duo would have resulted in an entire unspoken conversation between the parties involved. Not on this occasion; they simply moved towards the makeshift stretcher and lifted it with a synchronicity that spoke well of the hours they had spent practising under Miss Drill's watchful eye.

The walk was short but awkward when burdened with a stretcher, given the obstacles posed by uneven floors, jutting walls, and small groups of stairs. The girls were so accustomed to the varying sizes of the individual steps that generally they went unheeded, but this time they caused Fenella to stumble. She regained her balance instantly, but a quick glance showed that Griselda had noticed.

'Clumsy plonker,' Griselda muttered, her blue eyes hard and unfriendly. 'Can't you watch where you're going?'

'Sorry,' Fenella murmured, abruptly breaking their impromptu moment of eye contact. 'It was the step.'

'It was you not being careful,' Griselda said crossly as they manoeuvred their way down the rarely used narrow corridor that ran parallel to the potions lab and ended behind it. 'HB and Cackle'd have a coronary if we dropped Swoop.'

'The door's just behind you,' Fenella put in at that moment when her erstwhile friend seemed to be about to go past it, and Griselda rolled her eyes.

'Yes, I know that, thanks,' she said caustically. 'I've been here as long as you.'

She backed into the tiny room, dark and musty from years of disuse despite the unglazed window, and the two Fourth years gently placed their patient on the narrow iron bed.

Fenella cringed when it winced ominously as Deirdre's weight settled on it. 'I hope the bed doesn't go,' she murmured, half to herself. 'It looks even older than the ones upstairs.'

Griselda said nothing. She was fussing with the surplus edges of the blanket-cum-stretcher, trying to fold them back over Deirdre, her movements stiff with unease, and her very back proclaiming her unwillingness to talk.

Fenella sighed. 'Gris –'

'Don't call me that,' Griselda snapped back.

'Just tell me what's going on,' Fenella pleaded, several weeks worth of unshed tears threatening to rise and choke her.

Griselda turned slowly, and for a split second she seemed as anxious as Fenella herself was. 'I don't know,' she whispered, and when their eyes met it was as it used to be. Then Griselda blinked, and she once again wore the cold mask that Fenella was reluctanty becoming accustomed to.

'Just leave me alone,' Griselda snapped. 'I don't want –'

She was interrupted by a series of mumbles coming from the bed, and the two girls put their own problems aside and leaned over Deirdre.

'Deirdre?' Griselda coaxed softly. 'Can you wake up now?'

'Mmmmmmnnneeeugh,' Deirdre responded unintelligibly. Her head moved from side to side, and her hands grappled with some unseen enemy. She started to wail, a keening wail that sent a shiver through the girls' spines, and the two Fourth years jumped back – but not quickly enough. One of Deirdre's clawing hands grasped Fenella's tie above her tunic and pulled.

Fenella attempted to disengage herself, but Deirdre's grip was surprisingly strong, and Fenella gasped as her school tie turned into a noose that began to tighten about her throat.

'He-' she tried, but Griselda was backing away, her eyes wide and appalled.

'Gris-' Fenella tried again as she struggled to loosen Deirdre's hold, but the resistance only seemed to strengthen Deirdre's pull, and Fenella blinked as black spots started to dance at the edges of her peripheral vision as the pressure around her neck increased.

_Come_quickly_,__HB_, she thought desperately, as the black spots coalesced, obscuring her vision. Dimly, she was aware that someone – could it be Griselda? - was shouting, and trying to move her hands, but the roaring sound that filled her ears was too loud, and the darkness too enticing…

**xxx**

When Fenella began to emerge from her tunnel of unconsciousness, it was to a chorus of cacophonous noise that made her momentarily wish for renewed oblivion. Someone was shouting 'They're coming, they're coming!', someone was crying, and someone was demanding _instant_ silence, _now_.

Fenella's overwhelmed mind latched on to the last sound, taking comfort in its familiarity. 'HB,' she murmured, still not entirely with it.

Miss Cackle's kind face came into her field of vision, its creases deepened by concern. 'Yes, Fenella, Miss Hardbroom and I are here. Are you all right, my dear?'

Fenella swallowed and grimaced as the action hurt her. 'My throat,' she whispered. Her hands shook at they went to the neck of her blouse, now open and entirely tieless. 'It's gone,' she went on numbly. 'Where'd it go?'

'We took your tie off, Fenella,' Miss Cackle told her patiently. 'It was choking you.'

'Yeah…' Fenella agreed drowsily, her eyes drifting shut. 'Hurt.'

'Fenella –' Miss Cackle said, sounding panicked.

''S OK,' Fenella mumbled. 'Gimme minute. Tell HB to turn that yelling off,' she ordered as her head throbbed with every shout of 'They're coming, they're coming!' that came from the bed, although the volume was slowly decreasing.

Her eyes popped wide open. 'Griselda!' she croaked, remembering the look on the other girl's face. 'Is she -?'

'She's fine,' Miss Cackle assured. 'She came running for us and we sent her to Miss Bat. You'll see her later.'

'OK,' Fenella agreed, the sore place in her heart easing a little from the knowledge that Griselda had done _something_. She tried to move and winced as various parts of her body protested. She must have bruised herself when she fell.

'Just stay where you are for now,' Miss Cackle fussed. 'You can sit up against the wall if you like, but no more,' she added, emphasising her point with a particularly headmistressy glance over the top of her glasses. 'Come on; I'll help you.'

Fenella had to admit that she felt a little more like herself sitting up, even though her pounding head disagreed. Still, it was better than lying prone on the floor, especially when Miss Hardbroom was trying to navigate the tiny room whilst leaning on a stick.

'How's Deirdre?' she asked after several minutes of watching the mistresses confer, Miss Hardbroom nodding slowly while Miss Cackle's hands flew as she talked.

'She's not well,' Miss Hardbroom answered, interrupting her superior to look sharply at the Fourth year. 'We think she's been cursed, but it's impossible to tell until she wakes up properly.'

'Oh.' Fenella's brain churned sludgily over that information for a time before throwing up a second question. 'Who's coming?'

'We don't know,' the Headmistress answered softly. 'We don't know.'

'They're coming!' Deirdre said again, but now it was a moan rather than a shout. '_They__'__re__coming_, I've got to warn them…'

'Deirdre Swoop, _snap__out__of__it!_' Miss Hardbroom ordered. 'Come on, girl, wake up and tell us what you're talking about!'

Fenella was privately certain that tone could wake people from deep coma, and she was not surprised when Miss Hardbroom's demand was followed by a long pause, and a weak voice asking, 'Where am I?'

'You're at Cackle's Academy, dear,' Miss Cackle said loudly, slipping past her deputy to perch precariously on the edge of the bed. 'Do you know who I am?'

Another pause, then: 'No.' Fenella could see Miss Cackle's shoulders slump. 'I know who _she_ is, though,' Deirdre's voice went on. 'She's Miss Hardbroom.'

If Fenella had been feeling more like herself, she would have laughed at that. As it was, all she could manage was a soft giggle.

'That'll do, I suppose,' Miss Cackle said, a tad grudgingly, Fenella thought.

'Why did you come here, Deirdre?' Miss Hardbroom asked, looking as formidable as ever despite her stick. '_Who_ are you trying to warn?'

'And what in Merlin's name _happened_ to you?' Miss Cackle supplemented.

'The WTC closed Pentangle's,' Deirdre began, her voice thready but determined. 'They said it was because we didn't deserve to be a witches' school anymore, but that was just the start…'

She stopped to cough, and in the tiny pauses between each cough Fenella thought idly that if she concentrated enough, surely she could hear the heartbeats of the other women, so quiet was it.

'Why didn't you deserve to be a witches' school?' Miss Cackle demanded. 'Much as I hate to admit it, Pentangle's has always been top of the Witch School League Tables.'

'Because Miss P-Pentangle decided that being top in magic wasn't enough,' Deirdre explained hoarsely. 'She wanted to be top in o-other things too, like Games and Maths and music of all kinds, not just m-magical chanting.'

'She brought in non-witches, didn't she?' Miss Hardbroom asked, casting a swift glance at Miss Cackle.

'Y-yeah. We had an inspection the week after we came here,' Deirdre continued, her voice starting to shake. 'We got a warning, a-and then everyone got sick, and when we g-got b-better we c-couldn't do magic a-any m-more!'

'That's just like us,' Fenella pointed out, startled and disconcerted, but Miss Cackle put a finger to her lips in a shushing motion, and Fenella took the hint and subsided. Her head was starting to clear, and she didn't want Miss Hardbroom to notice her presence and order her out of the room.

'Did you have a second inspection?' Miss Hardbroom demanded, her expression so fiercely penetrating that Fenella shrank back against the wall.

'…Yeah,' Deirdre said, after a long pause. 'Yeah, we did. Just several days before – before _they_ came.'

Fenella watched as Cackle's two senior mistresses exchanged a meaning look.

'Who was your inspector, dear?' Miss Cackle enquired softly.

'Mistress Broomhead,' Deirdre told her shakily, and Fenella had to suppress an exclamation, even though the lack of reaction from the mistresses indicated that they had expected this response.

The Headmistress patted Deirdre's hand in a reassuring fashion. 'Where is Miss Pentangle?'

Deirdre said nothing, and Miss Hardbroom moved as though to speak, but she was prevented by Deirdre bursting out, 'She's dead! They killed all of our teachers, and made us watch….'

The shakiness turned into outright sobbing, and Fenella had to strain to catch the other girl's words as they tumbled out of her, a flood of undammed agony.

'They used the Killing Curse on Miss Newt, … meant it … Torture… the screams… on and on…The little ones…'

Fenella listened, her quick mind putting the words together to form a sickening ugly picture of what had occurred at Pentangle's. Her stomach – already unhappy from the attempted strangling earlier – churned, and she took several deep breaths in an effort to stem the nausea. Her gasps must have been louder than she intended, for Miss Hardbroom swung to face her for a moment, and any confidence Fenella might have had that Cackle's could Pentangle's fate disappeared.

In her four years at Cackle's she had seen a number of moods and emotions from the Deputy Headmistress. She had seen exasperation, fury, wry amusement, and recently, exhaustion. She had seen her quail when confronted with Mistress Broomhead, but she had never seen her look so nakedly afraid before a pupil.

Fenella lost the contents of her stomach all over the stone floor, a profound shock in itself. She was never sick. As Miss Cackle fussed around her, trying to tidy her up, Fenella could only tremble, unable to escape Deirdre's continuing litany of horror in the background.

_We__'__re __next_, she thought numbly, Deirdre's voice eclipsing Miss Cackle's feeble attempts at comforting platitudes. _We__'__re __next_.


	8. Chapter 8

_Sorry this part has taken so long! So far, I've been pretty fortunate in that I've done an absolute minimum of revision, apart from spellcheck/grammar etc. This chapter, despite being planned, went off on an unexpected tangent. I haven't used the tangent, but I don't regret it, for it's given me something to go on for… the sequel! Assuming you want one, that is…_

_Thank you to all readers and reviewers: all comments – including concrit and slavish praise – are more than welcome, and make me dance with glee, much to the mystification of my dogs. You'd think they'd be used to it by now!_

**CHAPTER EIGHT**

It was the witching hour of midnight, and the moon hung low in the sky over the turrets of Cackle's Academy. Stars were spangled sparsely though the night sky, cold and brilliant, their light only faintly reflected in the sparkling diamante of frost-encrusted snow. Instead of darkness or the soft glow of candlelight, a faint pulsating light emitted from the castle's narrow windows, but everything else appeared still and eerily quiet for a school; even the animals – the owls and cats and bats – were hushed, waiting for the storm.

Inside, Mildred Hubble pulled her pillow over her head and mentally cursed Frank Blossom and his attempts to provide Cackle's with a reliable alarm system.

'I'd rather burn,' she muttered, shutting her eyes tight in order to block out the flickering from the restored gas lights.

After the disaster that had been the last audible fire alarm – it had wakened not only the castle, but three of the surrounding villages too, and resulted in an avalanche of complaints for Miss Cackle – the powers that be had ordained that _silent_ methods of rousing the girls in the event of an emergency needed to be developed. Thus the unused Victorian gas lights were brought back into service, and their insistent flashing proved reasonably fit for the purpose.

Realising that the flashing was persistent and showing no signs of stopping – Mr Blossom _had_ been known to inadvertently trigger it at all times of the day and night – Mildred reluctantly concluded that perhaps this time it was a real alarm.

'Come on, Tabby,' she whispered to the little cat curled up on his usual spot on her pillow, his tail encircling him almost entirely. 'We'd better go.' Shivering in the biting air, she pulled on her boots and cloak, tucked a grumbling Tabby under one arm and grabbed her hat with the other, and opened her door – only to find herself face to face with a similarly attired Maud.

'I was just coming to see if you're up,' Maud whispered, swinging a snarling Midnight away from Tabby. She glanced furtively about. 'I don't think this is a drill. Something's up.'

Mildred yawned as she followed her friend onto the gallery where they joined the long line of stumbling, half-asleep girls as they made their way down the stairs.

'Thank goodness we're to go to the dungeons and not the courtyard,' she leaned forward to murmur into the other girl's ear, one half-done braid falling over the banister. 'We wouldn't burn if it was a fire, but we'd probably all die anyway – from hypothermia!'

Maud cast a very Hardbroom-like glare over her shoulder. 'Don't _say_ that, Millie!' Instinctively, she tapped her fingers against the carved oak of the banister beneath them, touching wood: a gesture of protection. 'Now come on. I want to find out what's happening, and I don't think it's going to be as simple as a _fire_.'

'That's hopeful,' Mildred said glumly. Lack of sleep always made her pessimistic. 'What's the betting that they'll call us down and then tell us nothing?'

'We'll find out soon enough,' Maud said sensibly, pulling her cloak tighter around her shoulders. 'It really is terribly cold.'

'_And_ dark,' Mildred commented with a shudder, her fear of the dark raising its head as they made their way tentatively down the twisting spiral staircase that would bring them to the dungeons below. Her breathing quickened, and she reached out to steady herself against the wall – only to pull her hand back at once in disgust. 'Eurrgh! It's all damp and slimy!'

'It's horrid, isn't it,' Maud said uneasily. 'Odd, too. We've been up and down this staircase loads of times, and it's never been like this.'

Mildred's teeth chattered, and she poked her friend in the back, urging her forward – not least because the girl behind Mildred was starting to complain that they were being _slow_. 'Go on, Maud. The sooner we get off this rotten staircase the happier I'll be.'

Her answer was a commiserating glance flung over Maud's shoulder, eerily lit by the single lamp that glowed at the bottom of the staircase.

Then Miss Bat appeared, her grey hair a wild cloud about her, minus glasses, but still with the inevitable conductor's baton behind one ear.

'Come along, girls,' she called sharply, and Mildred and Maud exchanged nervous grimaces as they sidled past her. 'Get into the kitchen and be quick about it. There's no time for this – this dilly-shally-dallying.'

The girls gave a sigh of relief as they entered the kitchen, made spacious enough to accommodate the girls by pushing the long trestle tables against the walls, and opening the doors into the scullery and pantry. There were no flickering gas lamps here, and Mildred looked almost affectionately at the candles on the tables and along the broad mantelpiece. Candlelight was kind and familiar, she thought, as she followed Maud across the room to the corner where they could see Ruby and Jadu.

'At least it's _warm_,' the former said as they joined her. She grinned. 'I think I'd almost prefer being down here, awake, than in bed asleep when it's definitely below zero in the dormitories and the blankets have got to be _at__least_ fifty years old.'

Cheered by this, Maud and Mildred giggled. They put the cats down; the animals were all used to each other, more or less, and the girls had become resigned to the occasional spat. Tabby twined about Mildred's ankles before slipping through the crowd of girls towards the large fireplace, and settling himself contentedly near the hot grate.

'Spoilt puss,' Mildred complained under her breath, watching her cat enviously. 'It's nice for some.' She rubbed her hands together, attempting to get some warmth back into her frozen fingers. 'Does anyone know what we're doing here?'

'Are we all here?' Jadu asked from Maud's other side, her question obliterating Mildred's.

'Miss Drill's bringing the First years in now,' Ruby told her. '_And_ look at who's standing next to HB,' she adding with a meaning glance in the direction of the fire, where Miss Cackle and Miss Hardbroom stood.

'It's _Ethel_!' Mildred said, outraged. 'What's she doing here? I thought she was leaving.'

Ruby shrugged. 'I asked Gris, and she said that she'd heard that Ethel and Sybil _are_ leaving, but Daddy Dearest wants to wait for the weather to let up.' She smirked. 'He mustn't be much of a wizard if he can't fix _that_.'

'He isn't,' Maud said absently, rubbing her eyes. 'Everyone knows that. That's why he's so obsessed with Mugical technology.'

'Mugical?' Jadu repeated, puzzled. 'What's that?'

Maud grinned. 'Exactly what it sounds like. It's Muggle-style tech that's been adapted to work in magical environments. Mr Hallow owns the company that makes the stuff. My parents got our TV from there.'

Ruby's eyes lit up. 'I'm _so_ going to beg Old Cackle to let me go there for work experience. It sounds _amazing_.'

Maud's grin faded. 'That's assuming Mr Hallow will have anything to do with us after all this.' She rubbed her eyes again. 'I can't believe I was so stupid as to forget my glasses.'

'Don't worry, Maud, I'll help you,' Mildred assured her, but before Maud could respond to this, Miss Drill had climbed onto one of the long trestle tables than stood against the kitchen walls and demanded silence.

'Attendance, girls!' she called. 'Make sure you're standing in your year groups and we'll begin.' She paused, and there was a degree of shuffling, but with Miss Hardbroom glaring at all and sundry, no-one wasted any time over it.

'Angelica Archangel!' Miss Drill began the register, and the Third years had to stop talking and wait with what patience they could muster for the explanations they hoped would be forthcoming.

**xxx **

Miss Cackle watched her pupils settle down and respond to Miss Drill's taking of the register with some pride. This had been, she felt, an exemplary drill – if only it was a drill. She could not shake the dread that had wakened her just before the gas lights began their silent summons, and with every moment that passed, her fear increased. It settled low in her gut, a cancerous growth that could deter her from being what she must be and doing what she must do.

'Constance,' she murmured into her deputy's ear. 'Walk with me, will you? I want to put the castle into full lockdown.'

The younger woman's only response was a sidelong glance and a quiet inclination of the head; Amelia could not tell from Constance's expression whether the other woman was fighting with terror as Amelia herself was.

Silently, she lead Constance out of the kitchen; they ascended the dark stairs without a word being exchanged, and it was not until they had emerged into the front hall and were thus safely out of the girls' earshot that Constance spoke.

'Did you set the alarm off?'

Amelia shook her head and shivered, wishing for something warmer than her cloak. It was enchanted wool, but like all enchantments, it only worked in conjunction with a magical being. 'I thought you did.'

'I did not.'

'Perhaps it was Davina … or the castle itself,' she suggested. 'It's a magical entity in a sense.'

Constance nodded her agreement, but said nothing.

Amelia managed a weak smile. 'I'm going to check the Gate,' Amelia told her junior as they reached the double doors. 'You stay here in the - uh – warm. I don't want you falling out there.'

'That doesn't help if _you_ fall, Headmistress,' Constance pointed out as one of the doors swung back. 'The ground will be slippery, and your footwear-' She raised an eyebrow at Amelia's knee high fluffy slippers, and Amelia felt her colour rise.

'They've got proper soles and they're warm,' she returned with dignity. 'Besides, _I_ can walk in a straight line without needing the support of a wall every couple of paces.'

Without stopping to see how this carrying of the war into the enemy's camp was received, Amelia pulled her cloak tight about her shoulders, and stepped out into the night. Almost at once, she regretted acting alone. Inside, the night sky had seemed frosty-clear, the courtyard bright from the moonlight that streamed across it. Now that she was outside, it seemed less bright, less clear… Amelia blinked, trying to clear her vision and wondering if she was imagining things.

And then the moon went out.

A thick mist enshrouded the castle, turning the darkness impenetrable. The fear that Amelia had tried so valiantly to control rose, choking her, and she screamed for help, her panicked mind hoping that somehow Constance would hear. The cry was ripped from her throat and swallowed by the mists, and Amelia realised that she could scream and cry all night, and no-one would hear, no-one would know.

Frantic with fear, she tripped something hard embedded in a snowdrift and fell, heavily. Fortunately, the shock of the icy impact returned her to her senses, and she lay in the snow, thinking hard. She peered into the darkness, and thought that the mist was lifting a little; she thought she could _just_ about make out the looming shape of Walker's Gate a short walk ahead.

_It__'__s __a _magical _mist_, she thought as she climbed slowly to her feet, her ageing joints protesting against the abuse they had received. _Perhaps __it __feeds __off __my __emotions__…_

That idea was strangely comforting; she could not control her environment, but she could control how she responded to it. She took a deep breath of the freezing air, allowing it to burn a path all the way down to her lungs, focusing on how it felt, and expelled it again. As she did so, she noted that the mist had indeed lifted a fraction: now she could see how the warm air of her expelled breath swirled amongst the frigid air of the mists, and through them both, filtered the pure still light of the moon.

Amelia smiled grimly as she stumbled towards Walker's Gate and triumphantly slammed the great iron bolt home, rejoicing in the almighty clang it made, the sound echoing amongst the trees. It was futile gesture, she knew: their foes were magical and to them the gates would be a mere trifle. Yet the gesture heartened her, and she started on her return trip back to Constance with her head held high. All the same, that walk was the longest she had ever taken, and when Constance's hands enclosed hers to draw her into the blessed shelter of the castle, Amelia practically fell into her deputy's arms.

'Close the doors,' she panted as Constance staggered back, still too weak to handle the unexpected weight. 'Close 'em tight, and lock them with all we've got.' She stepped away from the younger woman, her hands closing over Constance's upper arms in an effort to steady them both.

'Now,' Constance said, and they moved together as one to close the doors and lock them; even the heavy ancient beam was brought down across the doors, running from wall to wall.

'That's the best we can do without magic,' Constance observed, wiping her hands.

'And it's definitely _magical_mayhem that's stirring tonight,' Amelia told her grimly as she clapped her own hands to rid them from centuries of accumulated oak dust. 'Constance, were you watching me the whole time?'

'I saw you fall into a snowdrift next to the broomshed. What happened?'

'There was… Wait. You saw that? You were able to see where I fell?'

Constance's arched brows went up towards her hairline. 'Of course. It _is_ a very bright moonlight night.'

'Yes – until you step out there.' Amelia shivered at the memory. 'As soon as I went more than a couple of paces away from the door… it changed. The moon went out, Constance, and I was lost in a mist … Thank goodness I did fall over that snowdrift. I think it may have saved my life. Otherwise I'd still be out there, and if you'd come looking for me….' Amelia shuddered again. 'We'd have _both_ been lost in the mists, leaving the school even more defenceless than it already is.'

Constance drew herself to her full height.

She looked… _regal_, Amelia thought wistfully. Unlike Amelia herself, the younger woman had clearly not been roused from her bed. Her hair was down, flowing in unrestrained waves to her waist, but otherwise she looked as she always did: low boots, prim black dress, the bundle of keys that always swung at her waist at its usual place, and her black-and-green cloak was immaculate.

'So it begins,' the Deputy Headmistress said, her gaze meeting Amelia's without wavering.

A rush of pride went through Amelia for the second time in an hour. 'Yes.'

'I see.' Constance reached out to steady herself against the wall, and gave Amelia a tense smile. 'Shouldn't we go and warn them?'

Amelia sighed before she returned the smile, edging hers with regret. 'Yes. Let's go and warn them.'

**xxx**

Constance followed her superior as they slipped back into the kitchen, where Miss Drill was finishing off the register. As soon as the last name – Yolanda Yarrow – was called, a low murmur arose from the girls.

Constance's lips thinned; they seemed to have forgotten the recent troubles in favour of enjoying the accustomed warmth and the excitement of company at one in the morning. She glanced at Amelia, and sighed internally as she saw the indulgently maternal smile on the headmistress's face – now there was no hope that Amelia would give the warning that so desperately needed to be given! Amelia, Constance thought acerbically, was the epitome of the triumph of hope over experience.

The internal sigh became a real one as she watched Davina float over to Amelia, whisper into her ear, and lightly jump onto the nearest trestle table.

'Girls!' the chanting mistress called, whipping the baton from behind her ear and sneezing as the movement caused one of her frizzy tresses to tickle her nose. 'Ach-_too!_ Sorry, dears.' She blew the offending hair out of her face and continued blithely. 'I have had an idea, a _marvellous_ idea!' She clasped her hands and beamed and the girls.

Constance was sourly pleased to note that only a few beamed back.

Nothing daunted, Miss Bat went on in her usual breezy fashion. 'I've just been talking to Miss Cackle' – here she pointed at the Headmistress with her baton, causing that lady to squawk when said baton hovered dangerously near her eye – 'and we've decided that everyone needs some cheering up. Won't that be nice?'

_No_, thought Constance grumpily, sending a minute glare in Amelia's direction. How _could_ Amelia ignore what had happened outside?

'So,' Miss Bat announced, 'we're going to do some _chanting!_'

Her bright smile vanished when the girls groaned. 'Now, now, enough of that,' she snapped out, trying – and largely failing – to look impressive. 'These are dangerous times, you know, and we need to keep our spirits up. Shall we start with a nice round of _Eye __of __Newt_? Griselda Blackwood!'

'Yes, Miss Bat?' Griselda's voice came reluctantly from one dark corner.

Constance wondered if the girl had sought out Fenella after the latter's ordeal at Deirdre's hands.

'Take it from the top, Griselda dear!' Miss Bat ordered with a sweep of her baton.

Obediently, albeit with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, Griselda began to sing the old chant. One by one the others followed, and as more and more young voices came to swell the chorus, Constance found herself thinking – most unusually - that perhaps Davina had been right. As Amelia would say, their pupils may be young witches, but they were also children… was it not their duty to protect them?

Her unaccustomed moment of sentimentality was interrupted in the cruellest of ways.

Just as the girls had finished the end of the third verse of _Eye __of __Newt_, a wispy skull trailing tendrils of black and green flames shot from one end of the kitchen to the other, taking all the light and warmth with it, and leaving only darkness and frigid, choking, terrifying cold behind.

There was an instant of shocked, stunned silence: then the screaming started.


	9. Chapter 9

_I found this chapter really difficult to write for some reason. I'm still not entirely happy with it as a whole, but there's bits that I really like and will be returning to in the future... _

_Thanks for reading and especially for reviewing! :) _

_Enjoy!_

**CHAPTER NINE**

In the darkened kitchen Mildred was huddled down, as close to the floor and the wall behind her as she could get. Her hands were clapped to her ears, and her eyes tightly closed despite the blackness, for the echoes of the flaming skull still lingered in the air if you looked hard enough. She hummed to herself in a further effort to block out the sounds of shock and fear around her, and even though she could barely hear the noise she made, the vibrations in her throat and chest provided their own kind of comfort.

Someone shook her, and she whimpered, unwilling to break through her bubble of false comfort.

'Millie!' the someone screamed in her ear. 'You can't stay here; get up!'

Mildred did not move; in truth, she could not. During her time at Cackle's she'd found herself in a number of uncomfortable and occasionally terrifying positions, but never had she been so entirely paralysed as she was now.

She continued to hum, pulling her cloak tighter so that she could immerse herself in the cocoon of her own mind.

**xxx**

Constance found herself being clutched by two people at once. One of them was talking and the other was screaming. It took a moment for her confused mind to work out that the screamer was Ethel Hallow, and the talker Imogen Drill.

'_Quiet_,' she ordered at last, trying to put as much power as she could into the order. For once she did not expect it to have an impact beyond her immediate vicinity, but it did succeed in reaching the two clutchers, and Constance relaxed as she felt them release their painfully tight hold on her arms.

'Sorry, Miss Hardbroom,' she heard Miss Drill say in strained tones.

'We must remain calm, Miss Drill,' she told the other woman distractedly, while her left hand reached out, seeking Ethel in the darkness. She caught at fabric, and tugged it gently, hoping it was attached to her erstwhile pupil.

'Ethel?' she called.

No-one answered, and the cloth slithered through Constance's fingers before she could grasp it firmly, disappearing into the anonymity of darkness.

**xxx**

'Sybil,' an unfamiliar voice whispered into the Second year's right ear. '_Sybil_….'

Sybil Hallow froze. 'Clarice?'

'Yeah?' came in Clarice's matter-of-fact tones from her other side – or as matter-of-fact as one can be when it is necessary to shout.

Sybil swallowed, and fiercely blinked away the easy tears that came to her eyes. _This__is__not__the__time_. 'Did you say something?'

'No!' Clarice yelled in an effort to be heard above the general din. 'Waste of time! Why aren't the teachers _doing_ something?'

'Sybil….' the voice cajoled in a voice like honey, a voice that could not but appeal to the musical girl. '_Sybil __Pythia __Hallow__…__._'

'P-erhaps they c-can't,' Sybil yelled back at her friend, trying to think of something ordinary, trying not to think of the longing that filled her when that mysterious voice called her name.

A puff – a breath? – of cold air caressed the back of her neck, and she shuddered violently and tried to step away, but only succeeded in stamping on Clarice's sock-clad feet.

'_Ouuuch!_' protested Clarice loudly, making Sybil wince from the sudden onslaught of volume whilst she tried to get her pounding heart under control. _Breathe_, she thought, remembering the panic attack she'd had the week before starting at Cackle's. _Just_breathe.

She had just managed to calm herself when a hand grabbed her shoulder; startled, she jerked back, away from the touch.

'What was that for?' Clarice demanded, sounding offended. 'I was only trying to get my balance.'

Sybil gave an unsteady giggle. 'Oh. I thought you were – never mind.' _Naming __a __thing __gives __it __power_, she thought. _I __will __not __give __that__ – __that _thing_ – __power __over __me, __or __Clarice._

She arranged the flap around the top of her cloak so that it covered her neck, and firmly pulled her hat down low on her head, ensuring that no patch of skin in the area remained exposed. Then she pushed back against the wall, against Clarice's human warmth, and wondered who – or what – had called her name.

_It __knows __my __name_, she realised as her mind revisited her thoughts of a moment ago. _It __knows __my _full _name, __and __that __means __it __has __power __over __me__…_

When her eyes filled again, she allowed the tears to fall in silent protest.

**xxx**

_It__'__s __the _same _darkness_, Amelia thought as Davina moaned beside her, a keening that was oddly reassuring by virtue of its consistency.

_The __same __darkness __I __felt __outside. __The __kind __that __sucks __all __light __and __happiness __from __the _inside _of __you, __as __well __as __the __outside._

_At __least __the __screaming__'__s __stopped_, she thought with relief as her pupils got over their instinctive vocalisation of panic. After a fraught pause, the murmuring of young voices rose again, and a momentary smile crossed Amelia's face: _bless __them,__they__'__re __just __going __back __to __their __chats_ – until it registered that the tone of the murmurs was neither friendly nor comforting.

She strained to hear over Davina's muted but constant wails:

'Get _away_ from me!'

'That was my foot!'

'Get your hat out of my eye, you clumsy idiot!'

In the dark, it was easy to misinterpret speech, she knew. And the girls were frightened enough; the atmosphere was so tense that all it would take for the bickering to turn into something more was one tiny spark…

There was a lull in the squabbling, and two voices could be heard with crystal clarity – older girls, Amelia thought, which only made it worse.

'I told you to get off my foot!' one girl hissed, her volume dropping as she ended.

Her companion had no such reservations. Her response was clear and brutal, cutting across the quiet with the precision of a scalpel: 'Oh, shut _up_, you whining Mudblood.'

Amelia's entire body sagged as she heard the epithet, almost never used within the walls of Cackle's Academy, although it was sadly all too common in the more aristocratic sectors of the wizarding world beyond. 'Mudblood' was a name, an insult, aimed at those witches and wizards who did not come from magical families. It was an implicit declaration of superiority, an assumption that only those with magical talent had any worth.

The flat silence that greeted the Fifth year's sneering remark was both eternal and all too short. Before Amelia had time to consider how to respond, the air was alive with the shrill sound of girls fighting: screaming, insults, howls of pain…

She covered her face with her hands, trying to spur her shock-sodden mind into action.

And then help arrived from a most unexpected source: Davina's wavery soprano lifted in the first verse of _Onwards, __Ever __Striving __Onwards_.

**xxx**

Mildred remained huddled in her near-catatonic cocoon, trying to escape the nightmare that her school had become. Slow tears slid unseen down her cheeks, soaking the collar of her cloak where she had pressed it against her face. Dimly, she was aware of Maud and Ruby talking and pleading, but Mildred did not respond – until the familiar strains of the school song filtered through her fog of terror.

She sniffled as she straightened, forcing herself to focus on the sound of music, on Maud's well-known voice beside her. _I__'__ll__just__pretend__we__'__re__in__assembly__and__I__'__m__closing__my__eyes_, she told herself firmly as she slowly got to her feet.

'Are you OK, Millie?' Ruby's voice asked anxiously.

Mildred became guiltily aware that she had worried her friends. 'I'll be fine,' she told Ruby staunchly.

She shuddered as the sounds of girl fighting girl came a little too near, and one hand reached out in Ruby's direction, her fingers tentatively seeking the other girl's. She was relieved when Ruby's hand embraced hers; after years of running together, helping each other into and out of scrapes, she knew the feel of her friend's hand, knew the calluses on the thumb, formed from hours of playing with gadgets when at home.

'Mudbloods together, yeah?' she whispered.

A squeeze was her only answer, but Mildred felt comforted, her fears beginning to recede. Darkness had come, literally and metaphorically, but as long as she had her friends…

She gave Ruby's hand an answering squeeze and joined her voice to Maud's.

**xxx**

Constance was scarcely paying attention to either the fighting – there was little she could do about it, after all – or the singing. Her mind was occupied with Ethel Hallow's whereabouts. She was now certain that the girl was no longer near her – was, in fact, no longer in the kitchen at all. Suspicion crawled through her mind, trailing a slime of foreboding in its wake.

Her mind went back to a conversation with the Hallow girls the day before in the Headmistress's office. Miss Cackle had reiterated that their father would be coming for them as soon as the weather cleared, but in the meantime they would be expected to behave as if they were still pupils of the academy.

Ethel had responded with an insolent lack of concern, but Sybil's distress was palpable.

'I don't want to leave,' she'd insisted, her large eyes flicking imploringly from Miss Cackle to Miss Hardbroom. '_Please_.'

'My dear, your father –' Amelia started, but Ethel interrupted her ruthlessly.

'Sybil, this place is no longer worthy of us,' she'd said, her pointed nose in the air. 'Daddy says that Cackle's will probably be closed, as it's become an utter disaster. He's going to send us somewhere better, perhaps even L'Academie Beauxbatons in France.'

Sybil turned on her sister.

'This is all _your_ fault!' she shouted, her eyes blazing. 'I told you and _told_ you not to tell Daddy about the magic bug, and you said no, you had to, because he was the Chair of Governors, and in any case we're Hallows and shouldn't have to put up with this sort of thing. And Daddy called Broomhead in, I know he did, and now – and now –'

'Cackle's is finished,' Ethel ended, a smirk hovering at one corner of her mouth. 'Do pull yourself together, Sybs, and try to pretend that you're a Hallow.'

'Well, I'm not, then!' Sybil flung back fiercely, apparently forgetting the presence of the Headmistress and her deputy. 'I told you before: I wish Mildred Hubble was my sister, and now I'm saying that I wish I wasn't a Hallow at all! I wish I wasn't a Hallow..' she repeated.

Constance had exchanged a glance with Amelia as an odd expression flashed over the Second year's face. _Did __Sybil __know__…__?_

Evidently, she did. She pulled herself erect, looking uncannily like the portrait of her great-great-great grandmother in the Great Hall, and spoke with the perfect diction of the aristocrat she had been trained to be: 'I, Sybil Pythia Hallow, do relinquish the rights and privileges attendant to the ancient name and dignity of Hallow. _There!_'

'Sybil –' Miss Cackle tried, only to be interrupted by Constance's peremptory demand: 'Girl, do you know what you've just _done?_'

Sybil looked defiant. 'Yes! I meant it, too!' She turned on her stunned sister. 'You hear, Ethel? I meant every word!'

'Well, you've definitely done it now,' Ethel sneered. 'You've completed the ritual: disavowed your family three times. Fine. I'm never speaking to you again, and I'll do my level best to prevent Mummy or Daddy or Mona from having anything to do with you ever, _ever_ again!'

And she had turned on her heel and left the room, slamming Miss Cackle's door with a resounding bang that rattled the door frame and vibrated through the floorboards.

Constance winced from the impact of the door, and forced herself to stop staring like a 'demented goldfish'. Her startled gaze then switched to the younger Hallow sister, who was still standing in front of Miss Cackle's large desk, her posture defiant.

Her eyes, however, were pleading as she looked from one mistress to the other.

'She _betrayed_ us,' she said as the stunned adults tried to find words. 'Maybe she didn't mean to, Ethel's not great at thinking things through, but she's not _stupid_. She did it anyway.' Her eyes became huge and haunted, staring into some abyss only she could see. 'How many will suffer and die because Ethel Hallow could not hold her tongue?'

Constance shivered, but not from the cold. Was that the voice of a disgruntled child – or a premonition? She looked at Amelia, uncharacteristically lost.

'What will we do about this, Miss Cackle?'

Amelia had studied the girl for a long pause, her horn-rimmed glasses perched firmly on her nose. 'There's nothing we can do,' she said at last. 'Sybil is a Hallow; she's had some grounding in magical law, and she knew what she was doing.' She eyed Sybil, her gaze turning unwontedly severe. 'I believe you've something to ask?'

Sybil's head dipped. 'Sanctuary,' she said, her tone suddenly quiet. Her eyes flicked up again, and Constance could see the now-familiar shine. 'Will you grant me sanctuary, Miss Cackle?'

Constance had stared as Amelia rose to her feet, her small figure acquiring a rarely used dignity. 'I do,' she said formally.

Sybil inclined her head. 'Thank you, Miss Cackle.'

The two shared a long look as Constance blinked, thoroughly disconcerted by the turn of events. 'Is that it?' she demanded, looking at the Headmistress. 'She disavows her family and stays here? _Now?_' The last word was almost a muted scream.

'Go back to your form, Sybil,' Miss Cackle ordered.

'_Amelia!_' Constance expostulated as Sybil departed, resorting to the rarely used given name in her shock. 'What have-'

'What else could I do, Constance?' Amelia asked gravely. 'You know Mr Hallow. He's a narrow minded man with an over-inflated sense of his own importance – not unlike his oldest daughter, in fact. He's always out for the main chance, and that could result in some _very_unsavoury alliances. I don't blame Sybil for wanting to escape.'

**xxx**

Back in the dark kitchen, Constance remembered those words and another shiver rippled through her body, the tension winding every nerve into a fever pitch of agony.

_Ethel__'__s __been __rescued_, she realised with a sickening jolt. _What__does__that__mean__for__the__rest__of__us?_

She did not have long to wait. The tumultuous racket that still filled the kitchen as the sounds of hopeful singing chimed discordantly with the cries and screams of ongoing fights stilled abruptly when a light appeared at one end. It was held high, casting two figures into ghostly shadow.

Constance peered, trying to make them out. One figure seemed insanely tall, the top of his – or her! – mask-like headgear brushing the sides of the arced stone doorway. Next to this personage stood a much smaller figure, and Constance's sense of foreboding moved from the realms of fantasy to reality, for the smaller figure's hat pointed at a rakish angle, and this, teamed with a short cloak, proclaimed its identity.

It was Ethel. Safe in the arms of the enemy.

The taller figure moved forward, the lantern casting a perfect circle of light amidst the darkness. 'Trapped,' it observed with satisfaction, its voice neither male nor female. 'Like rats.'

The inhabitants of the kitchen remained motionless. Constance found that she could not lift a finger, and her voice was stilled, her larynx frozen.

_A __variation __of __the __petrification __spell_, she thought automatically, while another part of her mind mocked her preoccupation with spell identification.

'Someone wants to speak to you,' the tall figure said, sounding all too pleased at the prospect.

The lantern was now at an angle that revealed more: the height was largely from the high cone-shaped mask that came down all the way to the chin, leaving only holes for eyes and mouth. The rest of the figure's attire was equally concealing; even his or her hands were hidden from plain sight.

'What? Not a word of debate or argument?' the voice taunted. 'Not even from the estimable Amelia, or the supposedly formidable Constance? What a disappointment,' it drawled. 'We were hoping for a challenge… but there's going to be no challenge _here_. What a pity; no amusement for the Dark Lord tonight.'

Constance was numbly aware that she should feel something, but her emotions were as frozen as her body. All she felt was an overwhelming, enervating sense of inevitability.

_This __is __where __we__'__ve __been __heading __all __term_, she thought wearily. _This __is __why_ _we __were __infected __by __the __magic-draining __virus_. _This __is __what __the __Swoop __girl __risked __her __life __to __warn __us __of__ – __to __no __avail._

Something flashed – a spell from a wand, perhaps.

'_Move_,' the voice hissed. 'You are to move, _in__silence_, to the castle walls. Outside the castle walls,' it amended. 'There you'll watch us make our victory complete.'

Constance watched as the school moved on the word like automatons. It took an instant for her to realise that she was also moving, her body acting of its own volition. She could see that she was hemmed about with bodies as they walked – or limped, in her case – through the dungeons and up the stairs, but she could not feel their warmth. The experience was akin to moving underwater, every step taken with resistance.

_Perhaps __it__'__s __my __body __fighting __back_, she thought dully as her hands skidded along the slime-infested wall that encircled the staircase.

Then they passed through the front hall, out of the double doors, and Constance saw what Amelia had mentioned earlier: a swamping, choking mist that all natural human instinct recoiled from. Yet her body continued to move, seeming to know where it was going, even though her mind was increasingly disorientated with every step.

It was almost a relief to pass through the dimly-seen Walker's Gate, although Constance blinked when the movement dispelled the mists and she could see clearly, blinded by the white light of the moon.

She glanced up, and everything seemed to stop, for hanging above Castle Overblow was the most feared symbol of the wizarding world: Voldemort's Dark Mark, a black skull with a snake protruding ghoulishly from its jaws.

The wave of despair that washed over her was subdued, but her mind was remained clear, and it comprehended the significance of the Dark Mark: a declaration of victory.


	10. Chapter 10

_Well __folks,__here __we __are.__The __confrontation__… __but__don__'__t __expect _too _many __an swers __just __yet__…__! __There__'__s __probably __still __a __million __things __wrong __with __this,__but __it __feels __like __I__'__ve __been __stewing __over __it __for __weeks,__so__… __time __to __stop __tinkering, I think! Keep reading, keep reviewing, you lovely people..._

_Aggh, does anyone know how to solve FFN's idiocy over italics? _

**CHAPTER TEN**

The girls and staff of Cackle's obeyed the order to line up against the castle's walls, their feet crunching loudly on the frozen snow as they moved. Other than that, there was scarcely a sound to be heard; there was no attempt at a protest from the girls, despite the bitter cold and their insufficient cloaks. Even their eyes were still. Indeed, the only indication that they were alive at all came from the gusts of steam exhaled from mouths and nostrils, veiling them in a mist of their own creation.

They stood with their backs pressed against the walls, feeling the winter cold seep from the stone through their cloaks, stealing any resistance they might have had. The puffs of breath came faster as they waited for what would come, a visible sign of the terror that lurked behind the imposed compliance.

But nothing happened.

Even Ethel and her companion had seemingly vanished, leaving the school apparently alone, lined up like prisoners awaiting execution from a tardy executioner.

No-one moved.

The clouds of breath came smaller and with ever increasing speed, and the breathers grew pale with a pallor that could not entirely be attributed to the moon.

A owl tooted, an inadvertent warning, a sound that carried far in the stillness of the night, but there was no reaction.

Finally, a figure wrapped in its own personal shroud of mist stepped out of the shadows and approached Miss Cackle. By virtue of its mask, it towered over the diminutive headmistress, but when it spoke, the voice was familiar.

It was Agatha Cackle.

'Well, here you all are, just as I've wanted you for years. You won't outwit me this time, Amelia. This time you're finished!' Her laugh was gloating and triumphant. 'And you can't do a _thing_ about it. You're frozen, all of you!'

She laughed a second time. 'But you're feeling it all, aren't you sister dear? Yes, that's a tear trying to leak – but it's too cold, it'll freeze.' She came even closer, invading Amelia's space, and dropped her voice, a futile endeavour, for it was still clearly audible. 'Perhaps that's the way to go… just leave you like this, and you'll freeze all right – to _death!_'

'That wasn't the agreement!' a harsh female voice shrieked from the trees. 'That's no fun! Release them, Agatha!'

'You hear that?' Agatha hissed. 'They're after blood, they don't care whose. When _they__'__re_ done with you, freezing to death will seem… _kind_.'

She wiggled her fingers and watched avidly as the girls and staff regained control of themselves once again. Nearly everyone was quiet, but in the distance, further down the wall, could be heard the high plaintive crying of a terrified child.

**xxx**

Mildred managed to get her breathing under control. Hyperventilating would help no-one, and it would only attract further unwanted attention if she was to lose consciousness and fall into the snow. Even surrounded by her friends, she shuddered inwardly at the thought of being so vulnerable before an enemy: an enemy that was more numerous than they had initially thought.

Behind Agatha, through the veils of mist and darkness, she could make out a row of ghostly hooded figures. The mists moved in time with their advance, and the girls began to instinctively huddle together in the face of an unknown threat.

'This is it, isn't it,' Mildred murmured to Maud where they stood on either side. 'There's no way we're going to make it out of this alive.'

'Not without our magic,' Maud agreed sadly. 'And even if we _did_ have magic –'

She broke off, and Mildred had to force herself to breathe carefully again. All of these weeks without magic had fooled her into thinking of magic as a shield, a defence, but the pureblood Maud's hesitance to think likewise reminded her of the reality, and numbness took over.

_It __really __doesn__'__t __matter_, she thought. _Magic __or __not, __we__'__re __still __dead __either __way__…_

Mildred felt someone take her hand, and flinched away, back against the faithful stone of the castle behind her.

'It's only me,' the someone whispered in a voice that Mildred had not heard for some time. 'I'm so sorry, Millie. I've been so awful this term. I don't know what came over me.'

'_Enid?_' she heard Maud say disbelievingly from her other side.

'It's me,' their once-and-hopefully-future friend said with uncharacteristic meekness. 'I'm sorry.'

'Tell us again if we make it out of this,' Mildred whispered back. 'Then it'll really mean something.' But she squeezed Enid's hand all the same, and reached out her free hand to Maud, who took it with fervour.

The darkness crept closer, tendrils of mist reaching out as if to caress, fingers swelling to envelope some of the youngest girls.

Someone screamed.

'What was that?' Jadu murmured fearfully from Enid's other side.

There was a second scream, and the girls huddled together even closer.

Mildred, flanked by her closest friends, closed her eyes as hard as she could and prayed as she had never prayed before. _Do __something, __HB_, she wished, _do __something, __before __we__'__re __all __lost__…_

**xxx**

A third scream, long and high and wailing, was cut off with brutal suddenness, and it jerked Miss Cackle out of her stupor of shock and horror and into action.

'Stop this now,' she demanded, her voice trembling thinly in the air. 'Le t the girls go, Agatha – it's the school you want, it's always been about the bricks and mortar with you!'

'Ah Amelia, so sweet, so naïve,' Agatha returned from where she was still shrouded in the mists. 'I'm afraid, dear sister, that you are behind the times. This time… this time, the buildings would simply be the icing on the cake. This time, I – _we_ - want more…'

'You can't have the girls!' Amelia told her through lips that were stiff, and not just from the cold. 'You can't!' Desperate for some kind of reassurance, she reached out blindly, looking for someone to hold on to.

'Too late, Amelia,' Agatha said, and Amelia jumped back, startled, as her sister's face appeared out of the mists, deprived of its mask, her head seeming to float eerily amongst the nothingness.

Amelia gasped, and relaxed as a warm, firm hand took hers with a light but definite touch, steadying her. _Constance_, she thought gratefully. Davina, as she knew from experience, tended to cling, and Imogen was further along the wall in an attempt to keep her out of the line of fire.

But Agatha was ranting in her usual style, and Amelia forced herself to listen – only to find that it was not simply the same old story.

'Once upon a time, the school would have been enough. I could have sold it, made a fortune. But now… I'm after something better, something more.' In the half-light, her eyes glowed fanatically, and Amelia took a frightened breath and tried to retreat back against the support of the castle walls, the rough granite digging through the thin fabric of her cloak and pajamas.

'What do you w-want?' she asked, and cursed herself when she heard how she stammered.

Agatha grinned, showing a mouth void of most of its teeth. 'I do want the school, but I want its flesh and blood, I want its _soul_. I want your girls.'

Amelia's knees weakened. 'Why? They're _children_!'

'I shouldn't have to tell you, sister dear. You're a teacher. Tut tut, what would Granny Cackke say?' Abruptly, her voice dropped in pitch, sliding down the register. 'If we have the children, we have the future. We can train a new generation to believe in the Dark Lord, and they will train their children after them. We may lose a battle, but we will win the war!'

The fanatic glow was back and numbness took hold of Amelia. She had always known her sister was amoral, but the amorality had always been rootless, with little incentive or intent beyond a half-imagined grievance. Now she realised that Agatha had become a convert, a cult member, and that made her suddenly truly dangerous.

As she finished her speech, Agatha raised her hands and her companions moved closer, half-out of the mists and shadows. Their pale conical masks rose high, illuminated by the light of the moon. They were chanting, a hypnotically rhythmic litany.

Amelia was too frightened, too horrified, to try to decode it. She tried to take a breath but it caught in her throat as her body rebelled. Her lungs tightened, a cruel band across her chest, cutting her in two, and spots began to dance before her eyes.

_We__'__re __trapped, __helpless_, she thought in confusion, aware she was perilously close to unconsciousness.

'Constance,' she said automatically, the plea turning the name into a prayer, '_please_.'

'I think our work here is done,' a silky male voice said, and it derailed Amelia from her headlong fall towards blessed unconsciousness. 'Well done, dear Agatha. You shall be rewarded handsomely.'

The voice crept ever closer as it spoke, but Amelia was already too distressed to react when the face of its owner hovered momentarily above that of her sister, a face from a thousand nightmares. It was bloodless and almost noseless. All the life and colour of this – this _creature_ that threatened them all was contained in the sparkling red eyes.

Amelia opened her mouth to try a final defiance – and she was bleakly certain that it _would_ be the final one – only to be forestalled by the voice she wanted most to hear.

'Don't count your chickens, Tom Riddle,' Constance said in a low tone that grew in strength and volume, word by word. 'You were defeated once before. What makes you think it cannot happen again?'

'And how, pray, will a bunch of magicless women and children do _that?_'

Agatha cackled in the background, but Amelia ignored it, her pulse pounding so loudly through her ears that she could scarcely hear what was happening, only inches away.

'Yes,' Constance agreed, and her voice swelled as it regained all of its velvet resonance. 'We're defenceless as you understand it. Powerless indeed. But isn't it true, my lord' – and the title became a mockery on her lips – 'that you have been defeated before by the weak, and powerless, and defenceless?'

'_Constance_,' Amelia whispered in protest, heedless of the fact that her deputy would probably not hear, and would in all likelihood ignore the caution if she did.

'Shall I kill her, my lord?' Amelia heard Agatha ask, and her stomach churned as her twin's seemingly disembodied head bounced with hopeful glee. 'Can I? Can I?'

A long, pale hand pushed Agatha's head away, and it vanished into the grey ether.

'A battle,' Voldemort said, sounding pleased at the prospect. 'A challenge after all, and I do like a challenge.'

'Well, you won't get one this time,' Constance told him in the low tone that was well known to every inhabitant of Cackle's Academy as a signifier of her most profound and dangerous rage. 'We can't match your power, you've made sure of _that_. But there's another power, one that does not depend on magic, or potions and spells. Cackle's Academy!' Constance finished on a shout, and for a few seconds the energy in that shout dispelled even the enclosing mists.

And behind it, there was the ethereal sound of hopeful singing.

**xxx**

'We have to do something,' Mildred said desperately as the battle of wits between Miss Cackle and her sister escalated. 'We can't just stand here.'

Maud looked exasperated, as she had so often done during their years together. 'What d'you want us to do, Millie? We're stuck. There's nothing we can do. All these magical enemies, right on our doorstep… What is there to do?' Her voice trembled as she ended, and even in the dim light Mildred could see how her eyes shone with tears.

'Maybe there is something,' Ruby began thoughtfully from Maud's other side. The faces of her friends lightened somewhat; Ruby was known for her unorthodox solutions, just as Mildred was known for her flashes of insane insight. 'And the best bit is,' Ruby continued, 'it's not magical at all.'

'What do you mean?' Enid asked, her smooth brow wrinkling in puzzlement. 'How will that help?'

'Millie, Jadu, were you ever dragged to Sunday School as a kid?'

Startled by this unexpected question, they murmured an assent, and Ruby smiled. 'Don't you remember this: _love __is __patient, __love __is __kind_…?'

Mildred turned incandescent with renewed hope. 'Maybe that's it,' she said excitedly. 'The epidemic took our magic, but it also took our – our faith in each other. Our love for each other.'

'Yes!' Jadu's face was also aflame. 'I remember it too. We did it in primary school.' She began to quote: '"Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." Then the end, "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love". Don't you see? '"Love never fails,"' she repeated. 'It could work!' Then her face fell. 'How do we let the others know?'

Maud's smile was angelic. 'We sing it, of course.' And she lifted her voice and began to sing the words Jadu had recited in a very simple tune, just as Miss Hardbroom shouted her call to arms.

**xxx**

'What are those kids up to?' Fenella whispered in her neighbour's ear as the singing made its way up the line, a rippling wave of ignited hope. It was the first time she'd voluntarily spoken to the other girl in days. 'It's –' She stopped, realising the identity of the girl to her left.

Griselda shook her head, a finger to her lips, as she listened. 'They're singing about love,' she whispered back. Her eyes dropped. 'And faith, and hope … and all the things we haven't been, lately.'

Understanding crossed Fenella's face and she linked her arm through her best friend's. 'They're singing about togetherness,' she realised, and when Miss Hardbroom called out 'Cackle's Academy' she quickly put two and two together and answered the call, nudging Griselda as a hint to do the same.

Griselda gave the biggest smile Fenella had seen from her in weeks, and she turned to _her_ next neighbour and took her hand.

'Cackle's Academy,' she murmured, 'pass it on. Just keep saying it, over and over.'

**xxx**

For the first time since the epidemic had hit, Constance Hardbroom was standing steadily on her own two feet with no need for any kind of support. Her magic remained inaccessible, but she was aware of the once-familiar thrumming deep inside that told her that it was still there, a thrumming that seemed to swell in time with the volume of the girls' chanted 'Cackle's Academy'; she was sure she'd even heard a few bright sparks launch into the last verse of the school hymn, despite their dire situation.

Pride filled her; pride in her school, in her colleagues, in Amelia's gentle perseverance and Imogen's doggedness, and Davina's… sheer battiness. Pride, too, for the girls, _her_ girls, who seemed to have quickly understood what she'd only just fully grasped herself. They might defeat Voldemort with magic, but a line from a letter of Minerva's had suddenly made itself clear: _Dumbledore __says __that __love __is __the __power __the __Dark __Lord __knows __not_. Magic alone was not what was needed in this case.

And it was clear he had realised what she now knew as she drew herself up to her full height and faced him squarely, without fear.

'No!' he screamed, a shrill shriek of rage that reverberated around the woods and the castle walls, sparking off a host of frightened squalls from the animals who lived there. Even the girls were momentarily silenced, but they started up their chant almost at once, and Constance stepped forward, straight and tall.

'You're too late,' she said clearly. 'You thought we would be easily defeated, that we would fall apart without our magic. We haven't. You've lost, _my __lord_.' Once again her tone was mocking, unafraid to taunt the dark, and Voldemort's pale face contorted.

'I never lose,' he hissed, suddenly snakelike. With a movement so quick it was inhuman, he whipped his wand from his robes and commanded, '_Avada __kedavra!_' - and a green bolt of death hurtled unerringly towards Constance.

'Oh, no you don't,' she vaguely heard someone – Amelia? – scream, and the next thing Constance knew she was flat on her back, crashing painfully onto the frost-hardened earth, her hand still in that of her rescuer.

Constance blinked as looked at their linked hands, her stunned mind taking a moment to understand what it was seeing: they were glowing gold, a shimmering thread that bound her to every girl and teacher in the school, a thread that bound them all to the magical rock of the castle itself. And all at once, she knew what she had to do.

Gently, she detached herself and rose to her feet with her old grace. She could not spare the time to check on her rescuer – if ever there had been a need to think only of the good of the school, it was now. She straightened; the thrumming within her had become tangible, a wild exhilaration, and Constance _knew_ that her magic had returned in full. It almost burned her fingertips, begging to be used.

'Would you like to try that again?' she asked, a knowing smile twitching her lips. It was the smile that drove her pupils mad, convincing them that their Deputy Headmistress knew more about them and their doings than she should. It was deliberately provocative, and she used it to full effect now.

'One always likes to please a lady,' Voldemort hissed. He raised his wand, and Constance could see how several of the hooded figures beyond stepped closer, almost entirely out of the shadows. 'Shall we oblige?'

Their answer was a string of curses, some obscure even to her. She remained unmoving, watching them come towards her, that smile still playing about her mouth.

**xxx**

'It worked!' Mildred exhaled when the thread of gold materialised, linking hand to hand, girl to girl, pupil to mistress. Even she could see the flash of something not unlike uncertainty on Voldemort's face, and the downright fear on Agatha's.

Yet as the seconds ticked by, they were still caught in their impasse. Curses had been thrown at Miss Hardbroom, and the Deputy Headmistress made no overt move to defend herself.

'What's happening?' Enid whispered, clinging tightly to Mildred. 'Why doesn't she do something?'

'Perhaps she's just waiting for the right moment,' Maud put in, breathless from tension and anxiety as they watched.

'They're going to kill her,' Mildred said frantically. 'Why doesn't she – '

The were robbed of speech and breath when they saw what happened next. Their form mistress raised a hand, as if in welcome, and cupped it. The spells hit, and she glowed red for an endless while as she fought to subdue the curses. Finally, finally, the aura around her turned white… a white that grew, banishing all the darkness it touched…

…and the girls knew no more.

**xxx**

'Constance!'

Constance was vaguely sure that she knew that voice, and equally certain that something important was going on and it might be useful if she could only open her eyes. Yet it seemed to require too much energy; all she wanted to do was to float in this white nothingness, to treasure a rare instance of peace.

'Constance, please!' the voice begged. 'Please w-wake up.'

It was the hitched sob that penetrated, more than the plea or despair, and she carefully, wearily, opened her eyes and stared into the face that hovered above her, dripping tears that fell like rain onto Constance's skin.

'Amelia,' Constance said numbly.

Amelia smiled through her tears. 'Thank heavens you're all right.'

'What happened?'

Amelia's tears came faster. 'Y-you saved u-us a-all. Again.'

Constance studied what she could see of the face of her employer and friend in the moonlight. The tears streaming down her cheeks made her vulnerable and suddenly old. 'I'll have to ask for a pay rise,' she said half-seriously.

Amelia giggled, verging on hysteria. 'Oh, _Constance_.'

Constance stared over the older woman's shoulder, a frown deepening between her brows as memory trickled back, and she tried to raise herself. Amelia attempted to push her back, and Constance grabbed at her restraining hands.

'Amelia,' she breathed, the name a prayer of gratitude. 'You're _alive_.'

'Yes. Got through the whole thing without a scratch.'

Constance's grip tightened on her superior's hands. 'And the girls?'

Amelia's face receded into shadow. 'We lost three,' she said starkly.

'Oh, Merlin.' Guilt crushed Constance's chest. She hadn't been fast enough… 'Who knocked me out of the way earlier?' she asked abruptly, her mind trying to escape the reality of those three dead pupils. 'I thought it was you –'

'I w-wasn't fast e-enough,' Amelia sobbed, unwittingly echoing Constance's thought of a moment before and visibly collapsing into herself. 'It was Davina who saved you, Constance. It was Davina.'

Constance pressed her lips together against the yell of rage that wanted to come. _Dear, __silly __Davina__…_ She found herself yearning to shout at her colleague one final time, to watch her fluttering into her cupboard in high dudgeon after yet another argument about trivialities.

She sank back into a stupor, only half aware of Amelia's sobs or the mushy snow beneath her, a cold veneer of softness over the iron ground below. When a tear-streaked Imogen, accompanied by a shell-shocked Fenella and Griselda, came to help Constance to her feet she said and did all the right things. She managed to assist with ushering the traumatised girls back through Walker's Gate. When Imogen asked her to help carry Davina's crumpled body back into school, Constance went without a word, even when Amelia protested. She sat with Davina and the bodies of her lost pupils in the Great Hall all through what remained of the night, refusing to leave for food or rest.

She could cope perfectly well on little sleep or sustenance, she told Amelia when the headmistress anxiously urged her to go to bed.

She was still sitting there in her silent vigil when the first rays of the weak winter sun stole through gothic windows, illuminating the still figures lying on the centre of the dais. She was aware of only hollowness inside as she watched the pale golden fingers stroke the faces, lending them some semblance of warmth.

'And the greatest of these is love,' Constance murmured, thinking of so many things. She gave a bitter laugh.

Love had indeed given them their victory, but at a terrible price.

**xxx**

_*cautiously peeks out of trench* Um, tissue warning? Maybe? More seriously, what did you think of this? This was written right after I'd written Ch 2 and had to be subsequently rewritten. Does it work? Is it too confusing? Not dramatic enough? Too religious? – although that kinda just happened, I've always loved those verses. *crawls back into trench*_


	11. Chapter 11

**CHAPTER ELEVEN**

Mildred and Maud crept down the stairs, placing their feet with care as they navigated the many weak spots on the old treads. Despite the fact that it was approaching mid-morning, their need for silence matched the brooding hush that lay over the castle, and most of its inhabitants were still asleep – or attempting to be so.

Mildred and Maud were amongst those for whom sleep was an elusive, taunting sprite. They had huddled together in Mildred's room, listening to Tabby's comforting purr and watching the bats resettle themselves on their perch, and finding some reassurance in these ordinary things. They had grown drowsy, but the blessed forgetfulness of true unconsciousness refused to come.

There was only one place they wanted to be, only one place they needed to be, so they made their way on quiet feet through the deserted front hall and to the door of the Great Hall itself.

Maud pushed the door very gently, and turned to look at the Mildred. 'HB's in there,' she murmured, her eyes wide and alarmed behind their newly donned glasses.

For a moment, Mildred quailed and found herself longing for the haven of her cold dormitory, and Tabby, and the bats. She hated to think of how their form mistress would react to their presence now, but –

Her chin came up. 'She's there for the same reason _we_ are. She should understand.'

Maud looked politely sceptical at this, but Mildred prodded her forward, and the other girl had no choice but to move.

The door creaked as they entered, and Maud noticeably cringed – but Miss Hardbroom, seated near the dais on which the four victims lay, did not respond with even a twitch.

Cautiously, the two girls approached, their sock-clad feet making soft sounds on the polished floor.

She still did not turn.

Maud and Mildred exchanged looks of consternation, before moving with silent accord so that each stood on either side of their form mistress.

Mildred found that she was no longer concerned with Miss Hardbroom's reaction or lack thereof to their presence. Now that they were standing so close, the four still figures on the dais were inescapable, and her eyes were irresistibly drawn to them. Muggles would have covered the bodies, but that was not the traditional magical way. Each was laid out with their cloaks folded around them, like a baby's swaddling bands, but their faces were left uncovered.

Mildred's throat closed as she recognised them, rumour turning into reality: Miss Bat, a Fifth year, the little First year, Mary – and Clarice Crow, her bright hair turned into a fiery halo by the morning light. They looked peaceful, their features unmarred by any visible sign of how they had met their deaths, and Mildred gave a long, tremulous sigh of something very like relief.

'They wouldn't have felt it,' Miss Hardbroom said abruptly, causing the girls to jump violently. 'Don't allow that imagination of yours to get out of hand, Mildred Hubble. Death was instantaneous and painless. The Killing Curse is designed to do just that: _kill_. Nothing more and nothing less.'

'Yes, Miss Hardbroom,' Mildred responded automatically, before continuing with, 'I mean, n-no, Miss Hardbroom,' and she came to a stop, looking as confused as she momentarily felt, the lump in her throat growing by the second.

'I _know_ what you meant, Mildred,' her form mistress told her with that familiar weariness.

It was the last straw for Mildred's composure, as hot tears jumped to her eyes, burning them. She looked down on the floor, studying the grooves and scratches worn by the generations, and tried not to cry openly.

A gentle, barely-there touch on her arm made her raise her head. For the first time since their entry, Miss Hardbroom was looking straight at her, her dark eyes softer than Mildred had ever seen them, bruised-looking in a face that seemed to have aged ten years since last night.

'It's all right to grieve,' she said, her tone verging on tender, and Mildred nodded before shaking her head as the tears flooded anyway, regardless of her will.

'You too, Maud,' Miss Hardbroom continued. 'I know you were close to Miss Bat.' She paused before saying, tightly, in a voice that was only just under control: 'Davina Bat deserves all the tears you can shed for her. I – she – we were never friends, we were too different for that, but she is the reason that Cackle's is still in our hands this morning.'

Mildred sniffled. 'I thought that you –' she started, but Miss Hardbroom shook her head, her mantle of dark hair rippling around her as she moved.

'Only one thing can stop the Killing Curse, and that's when a person specifically and deliberately chooses to sacrifice themselves to save another. Willing sacrifice has enormous power; it's the ultimate expression of love, and that is something that dark witches and wizards can never understand, because to them life is cheap, and love worthless.'

'So _that__'__s_ why you were able to fight them,' Mildred breathed.

'_And_ that's what happened to Harry Potter,' Maud supplemented, and Miss Hardbroom nodded, and proceeded to explain for Mildred's benefit.

'Indeed, Maud Moonshine. Harry Potter's mother was given the choice: to step aside and allow Voldemort to kill her son, or to die defending him. She chose to die, and her sacrifice protected baby Harry and temporarily defeated Voldemort.'

She hesitated before adding, with difficulty: 'Something similar happened last night. Miss Bat sacrificed herself for me, and in doing so, she granted me temporary protection against the Killing Curse. Fortunately, her act combined with your show of unity to finally unblock my – our – magic, and that enabled me to reflect our opponents' curses back at them.'

'I'm glad we helped,' Maud whispered, wiping away the tears from where they had gathered in tiny pools on the bottom rims of her glasses. 'But why did He Who Must Not Be Named target _us_, Miss Hardbroom? No offense, but we're nothing much, are we?'

The mistress stared at the dais, at the tangible evidence and cost of their round with Voldemort, and sighed. 'Ah, that's the question, isn't it? I have my suspicions, but they are only that: suspicions.'

'What did Ethel have to do with it?' Mildred burst out.

'I don't know. I do know that she can no longer be trusted.' Miss Hardbroom's lips twisted into a parody of a wry smile at the glance the girls exchanged at that.

'Oh, I _know_ what you're thinking,' she added in the omniscient tone that usually made them shake in their boots. 'Perhaps on this occasion I will concede the point. Essentially: Ethel revoked any allegiance she might have had to Cackle's, and Sybil disavowed her family. She's claimed sanctuary from Miss Cackle.'

'Ugh,' said Mildred incomprehensibly, too shocked to be coherent.

'Wow,' Maud muttered, evidently in like case.

'I don't know whether Ethel played anything more than a – a bit part in last night's events,' Miss Hardbroom reiterated. 'However, I am certain we will find out.' She sighed. 'As Miss Cackle would say: you must brace yourselves, girls. I fear that this is just the start, for those of you who stay.'

Maud shivered. 'At Cackle's – or the wizarding world, Miss Hardbroom?'

There was no reply.

**xxx**

The atmosphere in Miss Cackle's office was charged with grief, and regret, and anger. The Headmistress sat behind her desk, her fingers furiously pounding on her typewriter, whilst tears leaked in a constant but variable stream from her eyes. From time to time her body shook with a poorly repressed sob.

On the other side of the desk was Miss Drill, her usually healthy complexion bleached to a sickly sallow tone. She was putting the newly typed letters into envelopes, the task taking longer than it should as her fingers ceaselessly trembled and fumbled.

She had just dropped a letter for the third time when Amelia pushed the typewriter away, a half-written letter still in it, and covered her face with her hands, her fingers pushing her glasses so that they rode up her face and fell off, dangling forlornly by their chain.

'Just leave it, Imogen,' she said, resigned. 'I don't think we're fit to deal with it today.'

'You said we need to do it now,' Imogen responded flatly. 'The girls' parents need to be told.'

Amelia rubbed her eyes. They were hot and gritty from lack of sleep and too much weeping. 'I think this is a time for other methods of communication.'

The younger woman's eyes widened in a manner that would be comical at any other time. 'The _telephone?_ What will Miss Hardbroom say?'

The Headmistress made an odd sound. 'Do you know, I don't think she'll care – not today. Besides, I didn't mean the Muggle telephone – or not entirely.' She peered at Imogen, a thought occurring. 'You know how to work them, don't you?'

Imogen blinked. 'Of course I do!'

'Good, good.' Amelia stared into the middle distance, trying to persuade the cogs of her brain to move. 'That's what we'll do. You can telephone the parents of the Muggle girls – there's only a handful, after all – and I' – she sighed – 'will get started on the others, using the floo.' She grimaced in distaste at the thought.

'You'll use the – the what?' Imogen asked, shaking her head slightly. 'Honestly, Miss Cackle, even after all this time –'

'The Floo Network is a magical method of direct communication across distances,' Amelia explained. 'Most uncomfortable it is, too. One must crouch at the fire –'

'The _fire?_' Miss Drill repeated incredulously. 'Isn't that a bit risky?'

'_Magical_ fire, Miss Drill,' the Headmistress clarified. 'You throw powder on it; it prevents the fire from burning. Anyway, you crouch by the fire and stick your head through to – to the other end, wherever the other person is,' she ended confusedly.

'I see. It all sounds very strange, but –' Miss Drill lifted her shoulders. 'I should be used to that by now.' She began to play with an envelope, her fingers tracing the Cackle's crest on one side. 'What do you think will happen? After – after _this?_'

'I'm a witch, not a clairvoyant,' Amelia told her, more sharply than she intended. She repented at once when she saw how Imogen's face fell. 'I'm sorry, my dear, it's just – The answer is that I don't know. I'm expecting to lose a number of girls, at the very least; I think that's unavoidable.' She glanced at the Games mistress. 'I assume you're aware Ethel Hallow has gone, but Sybil will remain here indefinitely.'

'I heard,' the younger woman said soberly, before 'I can't believe Ethel turned on us like that!' burst out of her.

Amelia lifted tired shoulders. 'Be that as it may, she's no longer with us. I _assume_ that she was taken away last night by Voldemort's followers.' Her lips pursed and her eyes narrowed. 'I shall be very pleased if I never lay eyes on that young woman again, but I will do my best for Sybil.'

'She'll be here over Christmas,' Miss Drill realised. 'Won't that be miserable for her?'

'Not if I can help it,' Amelia told her firmly. 'Now, Imogen, I have something to say to you.'

Absently, she reached a finger up to push her glasses up her nose, and frowned in puzzlement when they were not where she expected them to be. Almost at once, her face cleared and she returned the spectacles to where they should be, settling them securely on her nose and peering over them.

'Imogen,' she repeated, 'I think it might be time for you to consider if you want to remain with us. Last night was terrible, and I fear – I very much fear – that it was only a first strike. You are without magic and are thus uniquely defenceless: are you certain you want to stay?'

Imogen opened her mouth to reply at once, and Amelia raised a finger to halt her. 'Don't tell me now. I don't want an indignant reassurance that of _course_ you'll stay. This place has never been as safe as we'd like, but it's about to get a lot worse. Take your time; think about it, and let me know.'

Imogen nodded.

'Good.' Amelia managed a smile, and rosely stiffly to cross the room to the battered filing cabinet under the large master timetable. She turned to look at her colleague over her shoulder.

'If I give you the details, could you take a walk down to the village and make those calls? Tell the parents that we'll be sending the girls home earlier than usual. I don't think the atmosphere here is good for them right now.'

Some of the strain left Imogen's face as she nodded her agreement, and Amelia congratulated herself as she used a spark of magic to unlock the drawer where sensitive information was kept. The Games mistress could always be comforted by the Great Outdoors; when she returned, she would be more like herself. The Headmistress was acutely aware that they needed Miss Drill to be as much like her usual self as possible for the funeral that evening.

'I'll go and do this right away, Miss Cackle,' Imogen promised when Amelia handed her the sheet containing the contact details of Muggle families. She glanced at the paper, and then up to meet the Headmistress's eyes.

'D-do you mind if I'm a wh-while?' she choked, her blue eyes welling up.

Amelia patted her gently on the shoulder. 'Take all the time you like, my dear.' She smiled through sudden tears of her own. 'Get some … greenery, if you can. It doesn't matter what, even if it's only a branch from a fir tree. I - I think Davina would like it.'

'With berries and double cream,' Imogen agreed with a half-laugh, half sob.

Amelia's smile remained fixed in place until the door closed behind the younger woman. Only then did she collapse into the nearest chair, her face crumpling as she thought of all they had lost.

Of Davina, who had started teaching under Amelia's Granny Cackle. Of the flame-haired, freckle-faced Clarice Crow, who would be so dearly missed by Sybil Hallow, especially now. Then there was Mary, one of the most endearing eleven year olds Amelia had seen in many a long year. Even the stern Constance had not altogether been proof against the good sense and enthusiasm of the small girl. And finally, she thought of the Fifth year girl who had died, Ernestine Speedwell. Ernestine had never been the brightest or boldest of students, but she had honestly _tried_…

Amelia squared her shoulders and wiped away her tears. It was time to husband her resources and put her headmistress mask on.

The next days would be difficult, and even after that, she and Constance would have to find a way of dealing with the Hallow girl. And then there were the worries about next term. She had already lost one staff member, and she fervently hoped that Imogen would see sense and not return after the holiday. Even with a potentially smaller number of pupils to begin with, could she and Constance do all that needed to be done between them?

She pulled her grey woollen cardigan tighter around her plump form and climbed clumsily to her feet, suppressing a muted groan as exhaustion came to nip at her like a worrying terrier, causing her to long for an hour of rest.

She pushed the longing away and prepared to spend some hours at the fireplace, placing the calls that no teacher should ever have to make to a parent. Then she would go to garb herself in the robes of the fully professed witch she was, and there would be the ceremony to preside over.

It was the last thing she could do for Davina and those three girls; she would not fail them now.

**xxx**

It was late afternoon, and the winter sun had started its slow descent into night. Inside the castle the girls gathered quietly in the Great Hall, dressed in full uniform. Cloaks had been dusted, hats straightened, and boots gleamed in the candlelight. They wore their hair down, as was usual on formal occasions, and stood in clustered in their form groups, eyes skittering feverishly at every sound, for few had recovered from the trauma of the night before.

The dais was empty. The devastated families of the girls who had died had already collected their bodies, leaving only Davina Bat to the school.

Miss Hardbroom eyed the girls from the door where she stood flanking Miss Cackle. Miss Drill stood on the Headmistress's other side, dressed in a cheerful outfit that struck a deep contrast with the dark shades worn by the witches.

When Constance protested, Miss Drill's answer had been simple: 'Davina loved colour. She told me she liked this, so I'm going to wear it.' The tone had been so flat, so adamant, that even Constance had said no more.

'Girls,' she called, her voice reaching easily all the way across the Great Hall, arresting wary eyes. 'We're going to be going down to the lake to say our final goodbyes to Miss Bat. Before we do, I advise you all to cast a warming charm, just in case the enchantments in your cloaks have not yet reactivated.'

There was the sound of murmurings and rustlings as the girls obeyed. Constance watched them, her eyes scanning the room for any signs of difficulty in performing the spell. Her eyes narrowed when she saw a First year attempt to cast three times, and she was about to go to the child's aid when Amelia halted her with a touch.

'Wait a moment, Constance,' the Headmistress murmured. 'Let her try for herself. If she fails, it's better if – ah, that's what I was hoping for.' She smiled, and Constance rolled her eyes a little as she watched Jadu Wali assist the girl.

'If we wait for everyone to help everyone else, we'll be here all _night_, Miss Cackle.'

'We've got the time,' Amelia reminded her with a second smile, this one wavering at the edges. 'Davina wouldn't mind.'

Constance huffed silently at this, but she said no more; Amelia was right.

Finally, the rustlings settled and the girls quietened, their gazes fixed on their teachers, and Miss Cackle stepped forward.

'We have gathered here tonight to say goodbye to one of our own,' she began soberly. 'Davina Bat came here more than forty years ago, when my own Granny Cackle was still Headmistress. In those days, chanting was considered a difficult, complex discipline, involving the teaching of music together with many aspects of magical lore and myth. As you all know, Miss Bat loved music, but she struggled with the other things Granny Cackle expected her to do. She never said, but I think it was a relief to her when Granny died and left the school to me; as you know, I am no musician!'

The school tittered awkwardly, unsure of how to respond to a humorous comment at such a time.

'Go ahead and laugh,' Amelia urged with a gentle smile touching lips and eyes. 'Davina loved to see you girls happy, and I'm sure she would prefer the sound of your laughter to any tears. She could be ridiculous, but I think she was aware of that. She was honest, even to me and Miss Hardbroom, although we must admit to being frustrated with her: she would unload her unvarnished opinion and then disappear into her beloved cupboard in the staff room, leaving us sometimes literally foaming at the mouth!'

Constance's lips twitched as she remembered one such argument, when Constance had entered the staffroom 'with authority', and frightened Davina into watering Miss Cackle along with the plants. Miss Cackle ended up being watered twice, she recalled, for Davina had insisted on re-enacting the scene before vanishing into the cupboard.

Miss Cackle was continuing with her eulogy.

'Miss Bat was a true artist: temperamental and high strung. You could never tell how she would respond to even the most casual of comments. As Fenella and Griselda reminded me earlier, she could be enormously open minded, happily conducting the choir in anything from the most traditional of chants to Amanda Honeydew's latest 'hit'. She believed that every girl could contribute, no matter how great or little her talent. And most of all, she believed in the school, and what we try to do here.' Amelia stopped, and Constance saw her take a deep breath in an effort to steady herself. 'S-she gave her life so that Cackle's might continue as it has always done. No matter what comes, regardless of what people might tell you outside of these walls, remember: Cackle's matters, and so do _you._ Don't let Davina Bat's sacrifice be in vain.'

The silence in the hall was absolute, broken only be the occasional rustle of cloaks, and the odd sniffle.

'All right,' the Headmistress said, her tone changing. 'It's time to go. Line up according to forms and march out to the courtyard. Mr Blossom and Charlie –'

'_Charlie!_' Mildred Hubble exclaimed, startled into speech.

'He asked to come,' Miss Cackle told her gently. 'Miss Bat had no family, but she was always kind to him, so he asked to come. As I was saying, Mr Blossom and Charlie will lead the procession to the lake. They, together with Miss Hardbroom and I, will walk beside the bier.'

'What will _we_ do?' Fenella asked. 'We'd like to do something too, Miss Cackle.'

A low murmur of agreement rose from the girls, and Miss Hardbroom felt that unaccustomed surge of pride and affection for her pupils once more. Despite all her complaints, they really were good children, she thought with a warmth she could only rarely show.

'You can sing,' the Headmistress told them, smiling even though her eyes were visibly wet. 'I think she'd like that.'

'All right, girls, let's start with the school song!' Griselda called. 'Fen, Maud, take it from the top: _Onwards, __Ever __Striving __Onwards_…'

Constance watched as Griselda, singing, linked arms with Fenella, their coolness evidently a thing of the past, and led the school out to the courtyard, the young voices fading as they moved.

Miss Cackle came to stand beside her, absent-mindedly dabbing her eyes with her cloak. Without a word, Constance handed her a pristine handkerchief, and Amelia nodded her thanks.

'Shall we go?' Miss Drill prompted.

Amelia sighed, tucking the no-longer pristine hanky into one sleeve. 'Yes. Let's do this.' She straightened her hat, lifted her chin, and marched out of the hall, a staunch, stout, dependable little figure in black.

Constance exchanged a long look with Imogen before they fell in behind her.

**xxx**

The red sun floated lower, casting streaks of rippling red, gold and orange in the lake below. The edges of the water were frozen, but the middle remained liquid, flowing westward into the local river and from thence ultimately to the sea.

Davina Bat was ready to take her final journey. For the moment, her bier lay on the edges of the lake, half floating and half supported by the skin of ice. She was lying garbed in hat and cloak, her gold framed glasses on her nose and her frizzy grey hair on her shoulders. Her hands clasped around her broomstick, and at her feet was her cauldron, much blackened and burnt. Around it twisted a holly wreath, the leaves and berries collected that afternoon by Miss Drill.

The girls were told they could file past, if they so wished, to say their last goodbyes.

'She's ready to go,' Mildred said when it was the Third's turn, one arm around a sobbing Maud. 'Look at her, Maudy. Doesn't she look happy?'

'How can she be happy, she's _d-dead?_' Maud choked, lifting her head from Mildred's shoulder.

'She looks happy,' Mildred insisted. 'Almost as if she's smiling.'

'I think she _died_ smiling,' Enid put in pensively. When the other two looked at her, she explained. 'I heard Drill telling Cackle, after she was brought in. Drill said she looked as if she was smiling.'

'Maybe she was,' Mildred said. 'She deliberately threw herself in front of that spell. She wasn't afraid, she knew what she was doing.'

'M-may we all be so lucky,' Maud sniffed, pulling herself together. She stepped away from Mildred's supporting arms, and lifted one hand to wipe her nose. The other was firmly clenched along something slim and black.

'They forgot something when they were g-getting her ready,' she said, stepping closer to the bier. She looked at Miss Cackle, who was standing several metres away. 'May I -?'

'What-' Miss Hardbroom began, her arms folded across her chest as if this was a Potions lesson and Maud had asked for more pondslime, but Miss Cackle seemed to understand. She nodded, and Maud sniffed again.

She leaned down over the bier, precariously close to the lake's edge. 'Goodbye, Miss Bat,' Mildred heard her say, and she turned and was back with them, tears once again streaming down her face and pooling in the frames of her glasses.

'What-?' Mildred began, leaning forward to see, and nodding in understanding when she saw how Maud had slipped Miss Bat's conducting baton beneath her fingers, against the wood of her broomstick. '_Oh_. Good for you, Maudy.'

'Yes, indeed,' said Miss Hardbroom's voice behind them, and the girls jumped and turned to see their form-mistress standing there, but looking a tad less grim. 'Very well done, Maud Moonshine,' she said – and then she was back where she was, next to the Headmistress once again.

'Bless HB,' Enid remarked. 'Come what may, she never changes, does she?'

'I hope she never does,' Mildred said fiercely. 'You can count on HB to _always_ be the same.'

She had not intended the comment to be a dig, but even in the dimming light she could see the colour rise on Enid's cheeks.

'I _said_ I was sorry,' Enid retorted with only a little heat, and Maud shook her head.

'We'll always be your friends, but you can't expect us to just forget about it, can you? Even if we _do_ know you were under the influence of the virus.'

Before Enid could say any more, Miss Hardbroom called for quiet, and the girls had to step away from the bier, returning to their allocated places with the rest of their form.

Miss Cackle spoke. 'This is it, girls,' she said, her tone neither happy nor sad, but simply stating a fact. 'Miss Hardbroom is going to cast the spells that will literally send our dear Davina "into that good night".'

An indrawn breath rippled along the girls; this was magic that few of them had seen before, for Muggle burying practices were becoming increasingly common even in the wizarding world.

They became silent, waiting.

The Deputy Headmistress went to where Maud, Mildred and Enid had been standing moments before. She raised her hands, and held them there, her figure picked out in gold as the sun continued in its path towards the horizon.

Her hands began to move while her body remained almost entirely still. Her voice swelled out, every syllable rich with power.

'_Inciendo!_' she ordered, and several girls – Mildred amongst them – gave shocked gasps as the wooden frame of Miss Bat's bier went on fire, the flames licking slowly at first, but increasingly orange and fierce as the seconds ticked by.

When the flames were high enough that they could no longer see Miss Bat, Miss Hardbroom moved her hands again.

'_Mobililectica!_' she cast, and the burning bier began to move slowly in the direction of the setting sun.

A dirge began to play, and Mildred saw Maud twitch.

'It's Sybil,' the other girl mouthed, and Mildred nodded, thinking _Of __course_.

Accompanied by the haunting strains of a song that was half improvised, they watched until the bier had disappeared, until it was only the hint of a flicker in the night. When the light went out, the keening music stopped, the last note fading with the gentleness of a dying flame. They returned to the castle in thoughtful silence, hand in hand and arm in arm. One thought recurred in many minds as they thought of the future: _we __must __stick __together, __for __united __we __stand__…_

**INTERLUDE**

_This fic was always intended to end here, for Miss Bat's death and the manner of it was one of the first things I planned. However, the idea for a sequel came about partly because I realised that I couldn't possibly do justice to Miss Bat's funeral _and_ answer all the outstanding questions in one chapter, but neither did I want the story to continue past this point. There's a reason for that. When I was in Upper Sixth/Year 13, a group from my year went to Venice on a Business Studies trip. Whilst they were there, one of them died in his sleep. As some of you know, I went to a tiny boarding school. As you can imagine, we were all devastated, and the atmosphere throughout the place until we broke up for Easter was… eerie. I've tried to show something of that here, but I don't really think I've succeeded. Anyway, this story is dedicated to the memory of James Bainbridge and Rose Fenney, and to all those who try to hold kids together when disaster strikes. _

_On a happier note, this story may well end up being the first of a trilogy since I've realised that even with a sequel part two will only take us to the end of the year that's covered by _Half Blood Prince_ in _Harry Potter_. If I want to follow through to the end of _Deathly Hallows_, there'll need to be a third fic, but… we'll see. It might be possible to do it in two. Thank you to everyone who has read, reviewed, and favourited, and if you've been lurking but never popped in, now's your chance. Also, if there's an outstanding question (and I know there's many!) that you'd really like to see addressed, make sure you mention it. I know the threads I'm picking up for _Of Divers Hallowed Things_, but there might be something I've overlooked, so don't hold back!_

_Until next time,_

_Lisa. _


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